बेबाक · Editorial
The Citizen's Last Equaliser: Access to Justice Must Be a System, Not a Mood
In one week the apex court addressed the harassed borrower, an old land-acquisition dispute and the examinee — but a republic cannot ask its highest court to retail everyday fairness.
The Week's Docket
Read together, a single week of orders from the Supreme Court reads almost like a charter for the ordinary Indian. The Court criticised the State Bank of India for being "casual" with large loans while subjecting common borrowers to "borderline harassment", and urged fairer practices. In a dispute nearly four decades old over more than 1,500 acres acquired at Panchkula for Sectors 24 to 28, it held that neither a government nor a one-time settlement can curtail a citizen's right to move court. It granted relief to candidates appearing for the Uttar Pradesh Higher Judicial Service recruitment examination. Each order, in its own way, widened the door of justice for those who keep no lobbyists and pay no retainers.
The Other Signal
And yet, in the same season, the same Court denied anticipatory bail to RTI activists in Punjab accused of obstructing road work, and called their activism a "new business". The phrase matters. The Right to Information regime is the citizen's lawful instrument against opacity; to let a broad label overshadow individual facts risks chilling the honest seeker along with the abusive litigant. The contrast is sharp: an institution that defends the small borrower's dignity in one courtroom can, in another, treat the citizen-activist as a nuisance. Access to justice should not turn on which grievance a bench happens to find congenial.
Both Cases Heard
Both impulses deserve a fair hearing. The Court's concern about road work being obstructed cannot be dismissed; judges are entitled to examine whether a legal tool is being misused in a particular case. Equally real is that the activist, the whistle-blower and the litigating farmer can be important checks on an unaccountable office. The Bombay High Court's direction to the State to protect former judge Justice Patel, his wife and daughter in Mumbai shows how exposed even senior legal figures may become. The task is not to choose between vigilance and protection, but to separate the abusive case from the genuine one — individually, on evidence, never by category.
The Evidence and the Void
The pattern is concrete, not abstract. In the capital, a civic crackdown logged 217 demolitions, 237 properties sealed, 330 show-cause notices for unauthorised construction, 151 sealing show-cause notices and 91 demolition orders; the government took possession of Delhi's Jaipur Polo Ground only after a court refused a stay. Each act of state power lands on a home, a plot or a livelihood. Where the statute book is silent, even a willing court may have little to administer: the crash of Air India flight AI 171 has exposed the absence of a dedicated statutory mechanism for victims on the ground, leaving liability, quantum of compensation, timelines for relief, claims procedures and access to justice uncertain — which is why a statutory "Ground Victims Compensation" mechanism has been sought.
The Considered Verdict
The verdict is caution, not condemnation. India's judiciary remains the republic's great equaliser, and this week's record — addressing the harassed borrower, the land-acquisition litigant and the examinee — largely affirms that role; the decision to stay challenges to the Transgender Persons Act across four high courts and centralise them is itself a bid to avoid conflicting rulings. But the system is soft upward and hard downward too often, and access to justice cannot brighten or dim with a bench's temper. When the constitutional question of a serving Bihar minister's reappointment draws notices in one matter and a citizen's activism draws scorn in another, the signal about whose grievance counts grows muddled. Consistency is itself a form of fairness.
A Way Forward
The remedies are within reach and need no grand reinvention. The government should establish the statutory ground-victims compensation framework the AI 171 crash has shown to be missing, fixing liability, compensation, timelines and claims procedure before the next disaster, not after it. Regulators should hold every lender to one standard, so the small borrower is treated no worse than the large borrower. Demolitions, sealings and acquisitions should each carry clear notice, a reasoned order and an accessible, time-bound appeal, so the citizen need not climb to the apex court for routine fairness. And the courts can retire sweeping labels like activism-as-"business" for case-by-case scrutiny that punishes abuse and shields the honest. Power may act, but it must explain itself.
The rule of law is not proved when the state wins a case; it is proved when even the weakest citizen can still test power without fear.
At stake is whether citizens can use RTI, courts and due process to protect speech, liberty, property and dignity without being chilled by delay, opacity or arbitrary state power.
Citizen Justice Safeguards Bill
Parliament should enact a Citizen Justice Safeguards Bill requiring public authorities, banks and civic bodies to give written reasons, disclose appeal routes and meet statutory timelines before coercive action affecting loans, property, examinations or livelihoods. The Bill should create an independent state-level access-to-justice grievance forum to screen alleged misuse individually on evidence, protect bona fide RTI users and whistle-blowers from category-based stigma, and recommend interim relief or compensation where the statute is silent, including for ground victims of aviation disasters.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyAny citizen may ask any public authority for information and must normally receive it within 30 days. It flows from the right to know under Article 19(1)(a).
StatutoryEvery citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression — including a free press and the right to know — subject only to the reasonable restrictions in Article 19(2).
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of property save by authority of law — a constitutional (legal) right, requiring fair procedure and, in practice, compensation.
ConstitutionalNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
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An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →