बेबाक · Editorial
The judiciary is holding a line the executive has stopped defending
In one news cycle, the Supreme Court and several High Courts surfaced disputes over citizenship, arrest, land, water and dignity — judicial vitality that is also a measure of administrative retreat.
The week in court
In the space of a single news cycle, the load-bearing institution of the republic was not a ministry or a municipality but the bench. The Supreme Court sought the Union government's and the States' response to a plea alleging the misuse of Aadhaar as proof of citizenship. The Karnataka High Court declared the Enforcement Directorate's arrests of Gameskraft's founders illegal and ordered their release. The Gauhati High Court upheld the extension of the Inner Line Permit to Dimapur, Chümoukedima and Niuland. The Madras High Court declined to order a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into four AIADMK legislators' resignations. The Kerala High Court was told that a settlement had been reached in the Malaidamthuruthu dispute. And the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance, from newspaper reports, of an octogenarian and his visually impaired son. Several disputes, one pattern.
Vitality or vacuum
One reading should reassure. A judiciary that frees citizens from arrests it finds illegal, that examines a State's permit policy against the constitutional framework, and that steps in after reports of two forgotten people living in dire conditions is doing necessary work. When a High Court calls an arrest illegal, the rule of law has reached the powerful, not merely the poor. But the darker reading is harder to dismiss. Each of these matters reached the bench only because some prior office or process — an investigating agency, an administration managing land, a welfare system, or a lower court — had already fallen short or been challenged. The constitutional court was never designed to be the republic's first responder. Increasingly, it is being treated as its last. That is the tension worth naming honestly.
Two honest sides
State both cases at their strongest. The executive's defenders argue that agencies must investigate serious allegations, that alleged misuse of identity documents must be examined, that regulatory arrangements in Nagaland carry constitutional and administrative consequences, and that bail in grave cases must weigh the gravity of the charge. A state that cannot investigate or regulate cannot govern. The opposing principle is sturdier still. Power exercised without procedure is not strength but arbitrariness. Aadhaar cannot be treated as proof of citizenship merely because a petitioner alleges that some people use it that way. An arrest is not a punishment to be inflicted before trial; when the Gameskraft founders' custody was struck down as illegal, detention itself had become the penalty. The remedy for overreach is discipline, not surrender — and that discipline is the executive's duty, not the judge's alone.
What the record shows
The specifics indict the machinery that precedes the courtroom. In the Aadhaar matter, the Supreme Court has accepted nothing as fact; it has asked the Union government and the States to answer claims that infiltrators and illegal immigrants can obtain Aadhaar cards and project themselves as lawful residents. In Kerala, the State told the High Court it had reached an amicable settlement in the dispute over the eviction of seven Dalit families at Malaidamthuruthu. In Karnataka, Water Resources Minister Ramalinga Reddy said the Cauvery basin had not been able to release water to Tamil Nadu as per the Supreme Court order because inflow into reservoirs had decreased without the usual rainfall. The Karnataka High Court also expressed shock at the manner in which a lower court granted anticipatory bail to Vachanananda Sri in a case involving serious charges of child abuse and cruelty. And in Madhubani, an elderly man set himself on fire as a court possession order was being executed, while a mob beat the police.
The considered verdict
The verdict is concern, not celebration. A constitutional court taking suo motu notice of one destitute family is a moral act; a republic in which the destitute have no door but the Supreme Court is an administrative failure. When identity documents, water-sharing, land disputes, bail in a grave case and the execution of a possession order all converge on the higher bench, the ordinary machinery of the state — the revenue office, the welfare system, the investigating agency and the trial court — has stopped absorbing the friction it exists to absorb. The Madras High Court's reminder that political realignment does not amount to criminal misconduct is itself welcome restraint. But a line held by judges alone is a line that will eventually buckle under its own caseload.
The way forward
The answer is not to ask less of the courts but more of everything beneath them. Four steps are concrete. First, the Union government should clarify by rule and public guidance what Aadhaar can and cannot prove in any citizenship process, so the poorest residents are not left exposed to bureaucratic suspicion. Second, investigative agencies must record the necessity for each arrest in a form a court can test, so a High Court need not keep declaring detentions illegal after the fact. Third, States must build time-bound, appealable grievance redress for land, water and welfare, so an octogenarian or seven evicted families reach an officer before they reach a judge. Fourth, no order touching a person's home should be executed without visible administrative supervision and an attempt at conciliation on site, so Madhubani is never repeated.
A republic where citizens must litigate for water, land and the bare dignity of an old man is one whose executive has quietly left the room.
The executive's failure to investigate and regulate, as well as the judiciary's role as a last resort, is at stake in the disputes over citizenship, arrest, land, water, and dignity.
Judicial Oversight of Executive Investigations
Establish an independent, statutory body to oversee the investigations conducted by agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate, to ensure that they are conducted in accordance with the law and do not result in arbitrary arrests or violations of citizens' rights, thereby striking a balance between the executive's need to investigate and the judiciary's role as a guardian of the rule of law.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyAn arrested person must be told the grounds of arrest, may consult a lawyer of their choice, and must be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours.
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightNo one can be convicted under a retrospective law, punished twice for the same offence, or compelled to be a witness against themselves.
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of property save by authority of law — a constitutional (legal) right, requiring fair procedure and, in practice, compensation.
ConstitutionalWhat this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
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An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →