July 20, 2026, may eventually find a place in the constitutional memory of India—not merely as the date of a student protest, but as a moment to which future debates about citizens’ rights, State action, judicial process and constitutional propriety may return.
The photographs and videos of students protesting that day in the national capital have already preserved a defining image: the youth of the country, raising their voices before Parliament, confronting the administrative machinery of the State. The future of the country stood across the barricades from the authority of the State. Each was testing the limits of its power.
It was democracy under pressure.
And when that confrontation travelled from the streets into police stations and courtrooms, another institution was called upon to perform its constitutional role—the Supreme Court.
For the students, their parents and thousands who watched the events unfold, this was no longer simply a dispute over a protest. It became a test of whether the institutions of the world’s largest democracy could absorb dissent, distinguish protest from criminality and prevent the machinery of criminal law from becoming a punishment in itself.
On September 1, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana gave its answer in Yashovardhan Azan and Others vs Union of India and Others and connected cases.
Invoking the extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Court ordered that FIRs registered across the country, in any state or Union territory, in connection with student protests held between July 20 and July 25, should not be pursued or investigated and should be treated as closed for all intents and purposes.
But the top court did more. It quashed the FIRs specifically placed before it through applications filed by the centre, Delhi Police, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Assam. Though only the centre and these states had approached the Court with such applications, the Court extended the protection across the country. No state or Union territory, it directed, would register any fresh FIR relating to those incidents.
There was, however, an important exception. The Delhi Police was permitted to proceed against 2,873 individuals who had serious criminal antecedents. The Court, therefore, did not turn the protest into a zone beyond the reach of criminal law.
That distinction goes to the heart of the order. The Court did not say that a protester is above the law. Rather, it recognised that participation in a protest cannot by itself be converted into criminality. The Court recorded the government’s assurance that “mere participation in the protests is not taken as an offence under the penal laws”.
That sentence may ultimately prove more important than the headline that the FIRs were quashed.
A COURT TRYING TO PREVENT THE POT FROM BOILING
Justice Joymalya Bagchi put the immediate judicial concern rather starkly. The Court was exercising Article 142 to prevent people from being subjected to prosecution merely because they had participated in the protest. “We want to put these matters to rest and not keep the pot boiling,” Justice Bagchi observed.
Chief Justice Surya Kant, while preserving the State’s right to proceed against those allegedly responsible for serious offences, spoke of providing a “healing balm to the main body of protesters”. He was equally careful to preserve the presumption of innocence, observing of those against whom allegations remained: “We don’t say they are offenders. Allegedly.”
The language is revealing.
The Court was not conducting a trial. It was not determining individual guilt. It was deciding whether, in the peculiar circumstances before it, continuation of criminal proceedings against a large body of young protesters was consistent with the larger requirement of justice.
Its answer was no.
The judgment placed particular emphasis on the future of students who had “bonafidely” participated in a peaceful protest to raise their voices in favour of certain demands.
That is where Article 142 acquired its constitutional significance.
ARTICLE 142: THE EXTRAORDINARY POWER
Article 142 empowers the Supreme Court to pass an order necessary to do “complete justice” in a cause or matter before it. But “complete justice” has never meant unrestrained judicial discretion.
That tension has travelled through the history of Article 142. The Supreme Court has used the provision in extraordinary situations—to protect individual rights where ordinary remedies proved inadequate, to resolve otherwise intractable legal situations and, in appropriate cases, to fashion relief that existing statutory mechanisms could not adequately provide.
But the Court has also repeatedly reminded itself that Article 142 does not place the Supreme Court above the Constitution. Nor does it permit judges to disregard substantive statutory or constitutional limitations merely because they consider a different outcome more equitable.
In AR Antulay vs RS Nayak, the Court cautioned against using its extraordinary jurisdiction to make orders plainly inconsistent with substantive law. In Union Carbide Corporation vs Union of India, it explained the wide amplitude of Article 142 while emphasising that fundamental principles of public policy must inform its exercise.
Then came Supreme Court Bar Association vs Union of India, an important judicial attempt to fence the power. The Court made clear that Article 142 could not be used to “supplant substantive law” or to assume jurisdiction expressly entrusted to another constitutional authority.
This is the constitutional paradox of Article 142. The provision is deliberately wide because justice cannot always be fitted into predetermined statutory compartments. But precisely because the power is wide, the Court has repeatedly insisted that its exercise must remain principled.
The Court can bend procedure to reach justice. It cannot casually rewrite the constitutional distribution of power.
WHY THE JANTAR MANTAR PROTESTS CASE IS DIFFERENT
The September 1 order is significant because the Court itself built a fence around its extraordinary intervention.
It expressly confined its directions to the “peculiar facts and circumstances of the case” and made clear that the exercise of Article 142 would not constitute a binding precedent.
That disclaimer is not a footnote. It is the Court acknowledging the danger inherent in what it had just done.
A nationwide direction to close FIRs—even those not formally placed before the Court—would ordinarily invite questions about judicial overreach. Yet, the Court was dealing with an unusual convergence of circumstances.
The Union and several states had themselves decided not to pursue the FIRs. The government had assured the Court that no fresh FIRs would be registered for the same incidents. The protesters had accepted the arrangement. And, most importantly, the Court was concerned about the lasting consequences of criminal cases for young people whose participation in the protest was not, by itself, an offence.
The Court, therefore, did not present Article 142 as a general formula for quashing protest-related FIRs. It used it as a constitutional exit from an exceptional situation.
THE 2,873 EXCEPTION MATTERS
There is another reason the order cannot be reduced to a simple pro-protester verdict.
The Delhi Police was allowed to proceed against 2,873 individuals identified as having serious criminal antecedents. The investigation could concern allegations of bodily harm and destruction of public property.
The Court thus preserved the State’s legitimate interest in prosecuting actual criminality. That balance is important.
The constitutional right to protest cannot mean a constitutional right to violence. Equally, the existence of violence or disorder at a protest cannot mean that every person present becomes a criminal suspect.
The Court attempted to draw precisely that line.
As the CJI indicated, the State’s right to prosecute the “allegedly provoking elements” had to be preserved while providing a “healing balm” to the larger body of protesters.
This is not judicial romanticism about protest. It is constitutional proportionality.
THE JUDICIARY THAT CORRECTS THE TILT
And this brings us back to July 20.
The deeper significance of that day is not simply what happened between protesters and police. It is what happened to the equilibrium between institutions.
A democracy is not sustained by elections alone. Its foundation rests on institutions—Parliament, the executive, the police, the prosecution, the judiciary and, above all, citizens who retain the freedom to question authority. When the balance between these institutions begins to tilt, the constitutional design expects another institution to intervene—not to take over the role of another, but to restore equilibrium.
That is what makes the Supreme Court’s use of Article 142 important.
The Court did not order the government how to govern. It did not declare the protest beyond the reach of law. It did not immunise serious offenders. It concluded that continuing a broad criminal process against young people who had bona fide participated in a democratic protest, despite the State itself agreeing that the cases need not be pursued, would serve little purpose and could prejudice their futures.
The Court’s concern was, therefore, not only about the past. It was about the future.
THE FINAL CONSTITUTIONAL TEST
The most enduring question from July 20 may, therefore, not be: who won the case? It may be: did India’s institutions remain capable of correcting themselves when the democratic balance was disturbed?
The answer matters because constitutional democracy does not promise that power will never tilt. It creates institutions precisely because power will, at times, tilt.
The executive will sometimes act forcefully in the name of order. Citizens will sometimes challenge authority in the name of rights. The criminal justice system will sometimes become involved in the aftermath. And the judiciary will sometimes have to decide whether the legal process itself has begun to produce an injustice disproportionate to the original controversy.
That is where Article 142 acquires its real constitutional meaning. It is not a licence for judges to govern. It is an emergency constitutional instrument—one that must be used sparingly, transparently and with an acute awareness of its own limits.
The September 1 order demonstrates both sides of that proposition. The Supreme Court exercised extraordinary power, but simultaneously confined it to the “peculiar facts and circumstances” before it. It protected the future of bona fide young protesters while preserving the State’s right to investigate alleged serious criminality. It brought the FIRs to an end while refusing to convert that relief into a general precedent.
That is the balance.
And perhaps that is how July 20, 2026, will ultimately be remembered. Not merely as a day when the youth and the State stood face to face. Not merely as a day when photographs captured a democracy under strain. But as a day when the institutions of that democracy were tested—and when the highest court stepped in to ensure that the tilt did not become a permanent imbalance.
For institutions are the foundation of democracy. Their greatness is not established when everything is calm and orderly, but when the system is under pressure. When power tilts. When rights collide with authority. When the street moves into the courtroom. And when, finally, an institution has to stand erect—not above the Constitution, but firmly within it—to restore the balance on which the Constitution itself rests.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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