From Jantar Mantar to Noida workers protest, Court protects space for protest. It needs to

A climate where the executive is seen to weaponise its powers to curb civil liberties and get away with it dishonours the constitutional promise and guarantee. The CJI and the Allahabad HC bench have done well to apply the check

The two court interventions, granting relief to students, upholding their right to protest, are welcome.

3 min readSep 11, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Sep 11, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s rebuke to the Greater Noida executive magistrate on Wednesday was well deserved. It also sends out a message that is as heartening as it is timely: That the country’s apex court, which has a distinguished record of expanding the constitutional promise of civil liberties through judicial review and landmark rulings, and which has broadened the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression, will be watchful against state overreach. In this case, the CJI was responding to a notice issued to a student over his alleged participation in the Cockroach Janta Party-led protests over exam paper leaks, even after the SC had, in its September 1 order, quashed cases against student protesters, except those who had a criminal history. The notice to Akshat Tripathi was revoked subsequently, but the Court has rightly demanded accountability for the fact that it was issued in the first place. A few days ago, the Allahabad High Court quashed National Security Act charges against another student, Akriti Chaudhary, in connection with the workers’ protests in Noida in April. It described the invocation of the NSA as “arbitrary and vague”, a decision “worthy of derision”, and indicted officials from the DM to the SHO, while directing that the student be paid compensation for the “casual and cavalier exercise of authority by the state”. The two court interventions, granting relief to students, upholding their right to protest, are welcome.

The students’ protests at Jantar Mantar and beyond, which forced the powerful to listen, have underlined a message that governments can ill afford to ignore: In a democracy, especially in a young country, the people’s right to speak up and talk back to power must be protected and expanded. There are restrictions, of course — protest cannot slide into violence or vandalism or incitement to violence — but the onus is on the state to define those restrictions reasonably, precisely and narrowly. And if the state relies on loose and overbroad definitions to criminalise protest as it appears to have done in slapping the stringent NSA on Chaudhary and in attempting to intimidate Tripathi, then it must be checked by the court. Because, as the Allahabad HC underlined in the context of UP, the abuse of power risks reducing the state to an “Orwellian dystopia”, a dire landscape denuded of freedom, marked by severe government control.

A climate where the executive is seen to weaponise its powers to curb civil liberties and get away with it dishonours the constitutional promise and guarantee. The CJI and the Allahabad HC bench have done well to apply the check. The government must heed the message and take a step back. The judiciary must build on this valuable moment. To ensure that in a nation with glaring gaps between aspiration and opportunity, where the young have a voice and a phone to amplify it, the freedom to protest peacefully is a fundamental right. That message should go down to every thana, every neta.