By Inderjit Badhwar
There are days that pass almost unnoticed into the news cycle, and there are days that acquire a second life in the constitutional imagination of a nation. July 20, 2026, may prove to be one of the latter.
The images were striking in their simplicity: students gathered before Parliament, separated from the authority of the State by barricades and police lines. On one side were young citizens demanding to be heard. On the other was the machinery of government charged with maintaining order. It was, in miniature, one of democracy’s oldest confrontations: the citizen and the State, rights and authority, dissent and order. But the more important constitutional story began when that confrontation moved from the streets into police stations and, eventually, the Supreme Court.
Our cover story in this issue, The Supreme Balance, examines what happened next—not simply as a dispute over student protests, but as a test of the constitutional relationship between citizens, the State and the judiciary.
On September 1, the Supreme Court invoked one of the most extraordinary powers available to it under the Constitution: Article 142, which permits the Court to pass orders necessary to do “complete justice” in a matter before it. The Court ordered that FIRs arising from student protests between July 20 and July 25 should not be pursued or investigated and should be treated as closed. It went further, extending the protection nationwide and directing that no fresh FIRs be registered concerning those incidents.
At first glance, this might appear to be simply a victory for the protesters. It was not quite that. The Court simultaneously preserved the State’s right to proceed against 2,873 individuals whom the Delhi Police identified as having serious criminal antecedents. Allegations involving bodily harm and destruction of public property were not simply swept away in the name of protest.
That distinction is central to understanding the judgment. The Supreme Court was not saying that protest places citizens above the law. Nor was it declaring that disorder committed during a demonstration should be immune from prosecution. It was making a more nuanced proposition: participation in a protest, by itself, should not automatically become criminality.
That distinction goes to the heart of a democratic society. The right to dissent has little meaning if every expression of disagreement can be converted into a criminal proceeding. At the same time, the right to protest cannot become a licence for violence or destruction. Between those two propositions lies the difficult constitutional middle ground. And that is where Article 142 enters the story.
The provision is deliberately broad. It exists because justice cannot always be neatly contained within statutory compartments. Over the years, the Supreme Court has used Article 142 to fashion remedies when ordinary legal mechanisms have proved inadequate. But extraordinary power inevitably raises an extraordinary question: Who guards the guardians?
The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly recognised that Article 142 is not a constitutional magic wand. In AR Antulay, Union Carbide and Supreme Court Bar Association, among other cases, the Court developed important limitations on the exercise of this power.
Complete justice cannot mean whatever a court considers just at a particular moment. Nor can Article 142 become a means of casually rewriting substantive law or assuming functions constitutionally assigned to another institution.
The September 1 order is, therefore interesting not only because of what the Court did, but because of what it said about what it was doing. The Court expressly confined its intervention to the “peculiar facts and circumstances” of the case and said that the exercise of Article 142 would not constitute a binding precedent.
That qualification is enormously significant. The Court was conscious that a nationwide order closing FIRs could, otherwise, raise serious questions about judicial overreach. Its answer was to treat the case as an exceptional constitutional situation rather than a new judicial formula.
The surrounding circumstances mattered. The Union and several states had indicated that the FIRs need not be pursued. The government assured the Court that mere participation in the protests would not be treated as an offence. The protesters accepted the arrangement. And the Court was particularly concerned about the consequences of criminal proceedings for young people whose future could be affected long after the protest itself had disappeared from public memory.
Chief Justice Surya Kant’s description of the Court’s intervention as a “healing balm” for the main body of protesters captures this philosophy. Justice Joymalya Bagchi’s observation that the Court wanted to “put these matters to rest” and not keep “the pot boiling” points to another dimension: sometimes justice requires not merely deciding a dispute, but bringing an institutional confrontation to an end.
Yet, the Court did not pronounce everyone innocent. That was neither its task nor its constitutional role. It preserved the possibility of prosecution where serious criminality was alleged. The chief justice was careful to stress that those against whom allegations remained were not thereby declared offenders.
The Court was restoring a line that had become blurred. And that is why the story extends beyond one protest, one set of FIRs or even one Article 142 order. It is ultimately about institutional balance.
Democracy is often described as the rule of the people. But constitutional democracy is also the rule of institutions. Parliament legislates. The executive governs. The police enforce the law. Prosecutors prosecute. Courts adjudicate. Citizens exercise rights while remaining subject to law. The constitutional system works when these powers interact without one swallowing the other.
When the balance tilts, however, the judiciary has a special responsibility. It must be strong enough to protect constitutional rights, but restrained enough to recognise its own institutional limits. That is a difficult line to walk.
Too little intervention can allow the machinery of the State to overwhelm individual liberty. Too much intervention can produce the opposite problem: a judiciary gradually assuming responsibilities that belong to elected institutions.
The Supreme Court’s September 1 order sits precisely on that constitutional fault line. Its significance, therefore, lies not simply in its generosity towards protesters, but in its attempt to combine intervention with restraint.
The Court intervened dramatically—but described the intervention as exceptional. It closed the FIRs—but preserved prosecution for serious alleged criminality. It protected young protesters—but did not declare protest a zone beyond criminal law. It invoked Article 142—but simultaneously acknowledged the extraordinary nature of that invocation. That is the supreme balance.
Perhaps the most important lesson from July 20 is, therefore, not about who stood on which side of the barricades. It is about what happens when the barricades themselves become a constitutional question.
A healthy democracy does not eliminate conflict. It creates institutions capable of absorbing conflict without allowing it to destroy the system.
Citizens must be free to challenge authority. The State must be able to maintain order. And the judiciary must be capable of intervening when either side crosses a constitutional boundary. But the judiciary too must remain within the Constitution. That is the paradox—and the genius—of constitutional democracy.
The system does not promise that power will never tilt. It provides institutions capable of correcting the tilt. July 20 placed that proposition under pressure. September 1 provided an answer. Whether that answer will ultimately be remembered as an exemplary use of Article 142 or as another chapter in the continuing debate over judicial power is something only constitutional history can decide.
For now, however, one thing is clear. The real test of a democracy is not what happens when everyone agrees. It is what happens when citizens challenge authority, authority responds, passions rise, criminal law enters the picture—and the institutions of the Republic are required to decide where the line should be drawn.
On such occasions, the Constitution does not need an institution above all others. It needs institutions that know where their own boundaries lie.
That is the supreme balance.
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