'Are Citizens Slaves of Government, Can They Not
Protest…?’
Of late, some judges of higher judiciary, through
their public speeches and judicial orders, have awakened the national
conscience, raising hope of protecting the citizens’ fundamental rights and the
rule of law. On 22 March, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan of Supreme Court,
addressing the first national conference of SC Bar Association in Bengaluru,
said that with minuscule rate of less than 5% convictions, and more than 95%
acquittal, it is evident that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA)
is misused by the government impacting the criminal justice system. The critics
of the government arrested under this draconian law are languishing in jail for
years without trial and chargesheet, akin to a totalitarian-authoritarian
regime.
Justice Bhuyan said the goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’
requires more room for debate and dissent: “Debate should not be criminalised.
There should be more tolerance towards diverse views and criticism. Divergent
views should be respected”. Viksit Bharat should mean “equal distribution of
wealth and disappearance of acute disparity…which is the goal set in the
Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution”. On
societal imbalances caused by atrocities on Dalits coupled with caste-based
discriminations, he said, “deep social faut lines are there. Viksit Bharat
cannot countenance such fault lines”.
Justice Madav Jamdar of Bombay High Court went a
step further. Setting aside a Mumbai Police externment order against a
political activist by his Order of July 2, he said mere opposition to
government decisions can’t be a ground to force a person out of his
surroundings. The petitioner Saeed Ahmad Chaudhary, General Secretary of
Socialist Democratic Party of India, organised protests on issues like the CAA,
where slogans like BJP Government murdabad…Amit Shah murdabad were raised:
“Can’t citizens raise such slogans? What is this? Are all citizens being made
slaves of Indian Government…can they not stage protests or agitate?” The judge
held the view that arranging mochas and dharnas against certain decisions taken
by the government cannot be a ground for externment. The action
taken is mala fide.
The Order reads: “As per the Articles 19 and 21 of
the Constitution of India not only citizens have the freedom to express their
opinions but also to live with dignity. The action taken against the petitioner
for merely opposing certain decisions of the Government of India affects his fundamental right. It was his right to
raise his voice on issues of public interest. Now so many papers
have been leaked. If people protest, you will slap cases? It is the right of
the citizens to protest”. The Judge observed that “police officers are public
servants and not servants of the Chief Minister or the Prime Minister”.
In an
unusual six-page letter of 28th June 2026 addressed to the Chief Justice of
India Surya Kant – the first of its kind in independent India – leaders of 24
opposition parties, including the DMK and the APP, and an independent Rajya
Sabha member Kapil Sibal, have, inter alia, raised the flawed SIR exercise and
the partisan role of the Election Commission. It is important to understand the
concerns expressed by them. Excerpts from the letter:
“We would not have, under normal
circumstances, written to you. Given the fact that our democracy is in
jeopardy, we have chosen this unusual path. It is only when democracy is a
collaborative exercise that it can be sustained. The fundamental premise is to
ensure that electoral outcomes for formation of governments at the centre or in
the states, reflect the true will of the people. This letter is addressed
to this Hon’ble Court, and through the Chief Justice of India to the Companion
Judges, as the institution in which the people of this country repose
their ultimate trust. We believe that the electoral process is being
manipulated and outcomes in multiple instances do not reflect the will of the
people. Prior to 2014, there were hardly any telling instances, barring a few
exceptions, when questions were raised about the integrity of persons in the
Commission. But since 2014, almost every appointment made by the government has
been of persons closely associated with it and seen to be doing the bidding of
the government, brazenly, to manipulate the outcome of election
results.
The reason
for our grave concern is the brazen biased conduct of the Election Commission
of India (ECI), in particular the Chief Election Commissioner. There has been
open, unabashed support of the BJP during the course of and in the outcome of
electoral processes. The Commission has not been even-handed by choosing not to
take action when the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is breached by the political
party in power- all this while targeting those in the opposition. On multiple
occasions, the Commission had maintained a stoic silence when openly toxic,
communal statements contrary to the principles enunciated in the MCC. The
unkindest cut of all happened when the Election Commission and in particular
the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, chose to allegedly clean up the
electoral rolls in each state to ensure that they truly represent those who are
entitled to vote. The experiment of the SIR was first launched in Bihar. The
political rhetoric seeking to rationalise this process centred around the alleged
infiltration of Bangladeshis into the Bihar electoral rolls. Now that the Bihar
Assembly elections are over, there is absolutely no data to suggest that such
an infiltration indeed took place.
This
massive exercise just before the assembly elections, was ill-timed and its
faulty implementation a monumental disaster. The documentation process, adopted
for the first time, was inherently exclusionary and politically motivated.
Verification of voters based on filling forms and production of documents,
questioning citizenship, left voters disenfranchised. Lakhs of voters did
not possess the required documents. Many of them did not have the capacity to
fill forms and forward them as mandated. This was particularly true of those
who are poor, uneducated, including Dalits, Adivasis, members of the minority
community and migrant workers. The alleged objective of the exercise was to
remove duplicate voters and the names of the deceased and migrants from the
voters’ lists. But the process, as implemented, lacked not just transparency
but was implemented in a manner unknown to all processes undertaken in the
past. The whole process of the SIR was meant to favour the BJP.
The
situation became much worse when it came to the recently concluded Assembly
elections in West Bengal. It seemed that the Commission was concerned only with
the outcome of that election since it raised no real issues of manipulation in
other states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam where the SIR was not
implemented. It was apparent that the West Bengal Government was under siege
with the presence of 2 lakh 40 thousand CAPF personnel. To put this in context,
3 lakh 50 thousand CAPF personnel were deployed for the entire Lok Sabha
election in 2024. There was also a massive deletion of names from the electoral
rolls, including those arbitrarily removed, under a never-used-before-category
titled ‘logical discrepancies’. This devious ploy alone left 27 lakh people
without the right to vote. We write this letter to collectively express our
concerns. We believe that recently conducted elections in Delhi, Haryana and
Maharashtra were also manipulated. There is enough information provided
to the Commission and in the public domain that calls for adopting electoral
processes that instil confidence in the public. In light of what we have
stated, we do expect the impending SIR process be suspended. We find, and it is
a matter of grave concern, that the agencies of the government, in particular
the CBI, the ED and the NIA, are used only to target those in
opposition. These agencies are also used for the purpose of manipulating
the outcome of results in the elections, apart from bringing down elected
governments.
Judges do not live in ivory towers. You too are aware of what is
happening on the ground. The legacy media is largely compromised, but there are
many independent platforms that are still speaking truth to power. We respect all institutions as
we must. We honour them as we must. But when institutions themselves become
instruments of oppression, carry forward the agenda of the government, then the
future of our democracy is fraught with grave consequences. When all else
fails, people still repose their trust in the judiciary. So, when the judiciary
fails to respond, it indicates a complete breakdown of the Republic. Democracies turn into anarchies when institutional
mechanisms fail completely. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all of
us to ensure that people’s faith in institutions must endure. We
are not questioning the judiciary. In fact, we turn to the courts when every
mechanism fails. When this too fails, it leaves open the question – who do we
now turn to? We leave that question for you to ponder
upon”.
The issued raised are serious, and the CJI must act
on the letter as it is a collective voice of more than 60% of the people that
the Opposition parties represent. It is a serious indictment of the Modi-Shah
regime. As the custodian of the constitution, the supreme
court cannot afford to ignore the letter.
The Modi government is in the dock on the
international front as well. The UN Independent International Commission of
Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory had concluded that Israel was
committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Commission headed by a
distinguished Indian jurist, Justice S Muralidhar, says that the Israelis
actions are intended to destroy the very existence of the Palestinians in Gaza
by targeting their children. The Commission report documented that the Israel
military operations resulted in the death of more than 20,000 Palestinian
children and injuries to around 44,000 between October 7,2023 and October
2025. It is not just the killings. It is the destruction of 97% of
all schools and 22 out of 38 universities. Israel authorities have
been calling for the ‘complete siege’ and ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza
Justice Muralidhar’s report, which has sparked
renewed conversation and activism against the Gaza genocide, has been met with
stony silence from the Narendra Modi government. Incidentally, it was Justice
Murlidhar who had been transferred out of the Delhi High Court after he called
out the Delhi Police’s inaction on BJP leaders’ inflammatory statements in the
run-up to the 2020 Delhi riots.
And the “Modi government’s silence and inaction are
not just morally reprehensible but also inexplicable from a national interest
perspective. We are slipping further into Israel’s strategic orbit, at a time
when the word is increasingly pivoting away from it. We have alienated
ourselves form our historical allies in Palestine, Iran and the larger Middle
East. Our sacrifice of our strategic interest and morality has yielded us
nothing but the friendship between Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu,
who is now under attack all over the world including the USA”.
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