बेबाक · Editorial
When courts become first responders: the republic's unfinished business
From Aadhaar and citizenship to an octogenarian's dignity, the judiciary is increasingly being asked to answer failures other institutions should have prevented.
A crowded docket
Courts across India have been asked to settle questions that share little subject matter and much else. The Supreme Court sought the response of the Centre and the States on a petition 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 immediate release. The Gauhati High Court upheld the State Government's decision to extend the Inner Line Permit to Dimapur, Chümoukedima and Niuland. Different benches, different subjects, one pattern. Increasingly, the courtroom is where the republic's unfinished business arrives — questions an executive could have settled, or a legislature clarified, long before they reached a judge.
The common thread
What links an identity document pulled into a citizenship dispute, liberty curtailed by an illegal arrest, a permit regime and the eviction dispute involving seven Dalit families in Kerala's Malaidamthuruthu is not law alone but institutional vacuum. Each is a question the executive could have answered, or the legislature clarified, before it reached a bench. When an investigating agency arrests and a High Court later declares the arrest illegal, or when Aadhaar is alleged to be misused as proof of citizenship, the courts are not necessarily overreaching; they are receiving. The danger is subtler than overreach. It is that a republic begins to mistake judicial rescue for governance, and quietly outsources to the bench the ordinary diligence that ministries and Houses owe their citizens every working day.
Two honest readings
There are two fair ways to read this, and a serious democracy must hold both. One says the judiciary risks straying from its lane — that identity policy, permit administration and suo motu intervention belong primarily to elected and executive authority, and that every expansive order narrows the space democracy reserves for politics. The same tension runs through the Inner Line Permit: a safeguard for local regulatory and constitutional concerns in Nagaland, yet also a regime that affects movement and settlement. The other reading is that courts are often the last institution still answering the citizen's call; when relief follows newspaper reports of dire living conditions, restraint can look indistinguishable from indifference. Both readings deserve weight. The honest position wants courts that act when they must, and institutions upstream that make such acting rare.
What the record shows
The record is specific. The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of newspaper reports highlighting the dire conditions of an octogenarian and a visually impaired son, stepping in to ensure a dignified life. The Karnataka High Court declared the Enforcement Directorate's arrests of the Gameskraft founders illegal and ordered their immediate release, a reminder that process must answer to law. The Madras High Court dismissed a plea for a CBI probe into four AIADMK legislators' resignations, citing lack of evidence for criminal misconduct and holding that political realignment does not by itself amount to criminal misconduct. And the State government told the Kerala High Court that an amicable settlement had been reached in the Malaidamthuruthu dispute over the eviction of seven Dalit families. Four proceedings, one lesson: power must answer to law.
Data, not panic
There is a quieter institutional story that points to the cure. The antidote to anxiety over residence and demographic change is not a welfare database pressed into a role that remains legally contested, but honest enumeration. Houselisting for Census 2027 has been completed in 23 States and Union Territories, with eight more underway; Himachal Pradesh has begun field operations, while Kerala and Nagaland have launched self-enumeration. The Supreme Court's notice on the Aadhaar plea underlines why the distinction matters: identity systems and citizenship determinations cannot be casually collapsed into one another. A confident state keeps its instruments distinct: welfare identification stays expansive enough to reach the poorest, while citizenship demands its own rigorous, statutory test that does not harass the marginalised. Data, not panic, should settle demographic argument.
The way forward
The remedy is not fewer judgments but less need for them. Three steps would help. First, investigating agencies should be bound by clear arrest protocols and meaningful judicial scrutiny at the point of custody, so that liberty is not restored only after a High Court intervenes, as it did for the Gameskraft founders. Second, the Centre should clarify, in statute and rule, the proper evidentiary role of Aadhaar so that identity, residence and nationality are not blurred in practice. Third, regimes such as the Inner Line Permit should carry transparent procedures, appeal routes and periodic review, and Census 2027 should proceed with privacy safeguards and credible checks on accuracy. Strong courts are welcome. Self-correcting institutions, upstream of the courtroom, are better.
A judiciary that must step in to secure a dignified life for a forgotten citizen is a triumph of conscience and an indictment of everything upstream of the courtroom.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyNo 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 RightEvery citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression — including a free press and the right to know — subject only to the reasonable restrictions in Article 19(2).
Fundamental RightThe State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
Directive PrincipleThe right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce fundamental rights — called by Dr Ambedkar "the heart and soul of the Constitution." The courts can issue writs such as habeas corpus and mandamus.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
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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 →