बेबाक · Editorial
Six Years Without Trial, Six Names Struck Off: Courts Are Doing the Work Process Should Do
From undertrial bail to electoral rolls to campus rules, the courts keep repairing failures of process. A republic should not need a petition to secure ordinary fairness.
A Pattern, Not Accidents
Several matters now before India's constitutional courts share one troubling feature. In each, a question of ordinary fairness has had to be taken to judges because the executive or a regulator did not settle it properly in the first place. Bail petitions in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case have been filed before the Supreme Court. The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court has ordered names deleted from an electoral roll to be restored. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it may set up a panel to review campus equity regulations that the Court had already stayed. Each case has its own facts. Taken together, they describe a system in which due process too often arrives through litigation rather than through design.
Liberty Delayed
Umar and Sharjeel have moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case. Their petitions contend that they have been held for more than six years while the trial has yet to begin, and that this violates the constitutional guarantee of personal liberty under Article 21. The prosecution's case on the charges remains contested. It is for a trial court to test that case, not for this page. The strongest argument for continued custody is that grave allegations of conspiracy deserve caution. That argument has force. Yet caution cannot become a substitute for a trial. If an accused can spend six years in custody without a verdict in either direction, the process itself risks becoming a punishment, whatever the eventual outcome.
The Vote and the Campus
The same weakness appears elsewhere. The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court has ordered the Election Commission of India to restore the names of Paresh Salgaonkar and five members of his family to the electoral roll within 10 days, after verifying their addresses. Their names had been deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the rolls. A roll revision exists to clean up the register, not to make families fight to get back onto it after the fact. On campuses, the Supreme Court stayed the UGC's equity regulations in January, stating that they were “too vague”. The regulations had sparked protests by upper-caste student groups, and the Centre now says it is examining the criticism and may set up a panel to review them. Protection against discrimination on campus is a legitimate goal. It is not well served by rules that the Supreme Court has found “too vague”.
Weighing Both Sides
The case for the institutions deserves to be stated fairly. Investigating agencies handle complex cases that can involve large volumes of evidence. The Election Commission of India has to maintain accurate rolls across a country of continental size. The UGC is trying to address caste discrimination on campuses, a concern that is widely acknowledged, while its critics argue that the rules as drafted were unclear. In Punjab, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has opened the way for the National Investigation Agency to take over the probe into the September violence and arson at Lovely Professional University, and has sought the Centre's decision on the matter. That shows the courts can also strengthen an investigation, not only restrain one. Even so, good intentions do not excuse poor procedure. In the cases of the undertrials, the deleted voters and the stayed campus rules, it is citizens, families and students who have borne the cost of process that did not work as it should.
A Way Forward
Three concrete steps would reduce the load on the courts. First, cases in which an accused has spent several years in custody without the start of trial should receive priority listing, with time-bound benchmarks for framing charges. Second, the Election Commission of India should not finalise any deletion during a roll revision without prior notice to the voter and an address check, the kind of verification the Goa bench has now required only after the names were struck off. Third, the Centre's proposed panel on the UGC regulations should consult student bodies from every community, including those most exposed to campus discrimination. It should then publish clear definitions and a grievance procedure that can withstand judicial review. Courts should remain the last guarantee of fairness in the republic. They should not be its first and only one.
When a citizen must go to a High Court to remain a voter, the failure lies not with the citizen but with the process that struck him off.
What this editorial rests on
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An editorial is the considered opinion of the Aad Tak desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →