बेबाक · Editorial
When Courts Do the Governing: A Republic Leaning Hard on Its Judges
Across paper leaks, riot murders, official harassment and road deaths, the courts are doing accountability work that administration should not leave until litigation.
A Week in the Dock
Read the week's court reporting together and a pattern emerges. A Rouse Avenue fast-track court, under Special Judge Anu Grover Baliga, took on record the CBI's final report against 13 accused in the NEET paper-leak case. A Delhi court handed life imprisonment to a former municipal councillor and four others for the 2020 killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma. The Supreme Court ordered the Rajasthan government to pay one lakh rupees to an official as compensation for harassment caused by political interference in a prosecution sanction, and directed the Centre and States to develop a mechanism for compensation in accidents involving stray animals on roads. In a single news cycle, the judiciary touched examinations, riots, roads and administrative vendetta.
The Core Tension
On its face this is the rule of law working, and it is worth saying so plainly. Yet the volume should trouble us. When the Supreme Court must ask the Ministry to facilitate DNA testing of Indians killed in the Russia-Ukraine war and ensure legal aid for their families' compensation claims, or must itself moot a solatium protocol for animal-related accidents, the courts are not merely adjudicating disputes. They are pushing into the compensation architecture that administration should have anticipated. A bench that writes policy from the gap left by administration is doing two jobs. The first is its own. The second belongs to the executive, and governance by continuing judicial prodding has no budget, no ballot and no easy exit.
Steel-Manning Both Sides
The case for judicial firmness is honest: constitutional courts exist to fill silences that leave citizens remediless, and a grieving family owes nothing to bureaucratic delay. The stray-animal directions and the war-dead DNA order are humane responses to real suffering; so is a High Court's concern over an advocate's alleged assault by non-state actors after a molestation allegation. The case for restraint is equally serious. Every mechanism a court designs is one the elected executive did not, and open justice can be complicated by fears of misuse, as the Supreme Court's July 24 interim order barring circulation of livestream proceedings on digital platforms showed, even as activists said it reversed the principle of open justice. The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Act, 2026 is the alternative model: the legislature, not the bench, writing the rule. The question is not whether courts may act, but why they must so often.
Facts on Record
The specifics discipline the argument. The NEET chargesheet names 13 accused and reaches a courtroom after a paper-leak case had already become a criminal file. The one-lakh-rupee order against a state government is small in rupees and large in signal: harassment linked to political interference in prosecution sanction now carries a price. The 2020 riot conviction records that Ankit Sharma was lynched solely on account of his religion, a finding no editorial should soften. Presidential assent to the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Act, 2026 answers exam malpractice through statute. Each fact points the same way: institutions functioning under strain, often after damage has already been done.
The Verdict
Pulse Bharat's judgment is concern, not despair. The courts are holding, taking chargesheets on record, sentencing convicted killers, penalising a government for harassing its own official, and asking that two adult sisters in a conversion-and-marriage case be brought before the Allahabad High Court after they said through counsel that they converted voluntarily and without pressure, force or inducement. That is the republic's law working as designed, and citizens should take quiet reassurance from it. But a healthy state does not require its highest court to invent solatium mechanisms or supervise identification of remains abroad. Judicial competence spent covering administrative absence is competence not spent clearing the pendency that leaves ordinary litigants waiting years. Accountability delivered by judges alone is accountability the executive has quietly outsourced.
The Way Forward
The remedy is not fewer judgments but a faster executive. Where the Supreme Court has directed the Centre and States to frame a stray-animal compensation mechanism, the concerned authorities should act without waiting for further prodding. The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Act, 2026 must be matched by secure paper custody, digital audit trails, whistleblower protection and prompt trials. States should read the Rajasthan order as a warning to end political interference in prosecution sanctions. Open-justice safeguards on livestream archives should be settled by a transparent protocol that addresses misuse without making public access collateral damage. Let the courts return to judging, and the government to governing; the Constitution assigns each its work, and the citizen is owed both.
A judiciary that must design compensation mechanisms, facilitate DNA testing and confront exam malpractice is compensating for an executive that arrived too late.
The judiciary's increasing role in governance raises concerns about the separation of powers and the executive's responsibility to deliver justice and services to citizens.
Judicial Oversight, Executive Accountability Act
The Mudda proposes the introduction of the Judicial Oversight, Executive Accountability Act, which would establish an independent oversight body to monitor the executive's performance in delivering justice and services to citizens. This body would track the number of cases where the judiciary has had to intervene, identify systemic gaps, and provide recommendations to the executive to improve its performance. The Act would also mandate the executive to submit regular reports to Parliament on its progress in addressing these gaps, ensuring transparency and accountability.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyThe State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth — while allowing special provision for women, children and backward classes.
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
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 RightThe State shall make provision for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.
Directive PrincipleWhat 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 →