The court, it appears, suffers from a curious case of selective vision; it sees cockroaches only when they belong to a certain community, and remains conveniently blind when the protests are too politically costly to touch
ONE of the most powerful governments trembled; the masterminds bent. In the 2026 protest, a satirical joke on social media, backed by youth, forced the resignation of the Union Education Minister and restored, however briefly, faith in democratic dissent.
What made this NEET protest succeed when the 2020 anti-CAA protest didn’t? But even in victory, the pattern reasserted itself. Students returning to Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) after the protest were detained and harassed. A volunteer named Mohammad Junaid saw his family harassed and his house raided, not for any act of violence but for serving food to thousands of students at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Hence, the government relented, but only for some.
The question remains: Why does the discrimination persist and why is the law applied differently? What were the flaws in the 2020 protest that made justice impossible for some, even in the victory of 2026?
Both Protests Were Constitutionally Legitimate
The protest of 2020 was legitimate under Article 19(1)(a) and Article 19(1)(b) of the Constitution of India, which guarantee the right to freedom of speech and the right to assemble peacefully. The protesters were not asking for anything unconstitutional, but for the repeal of a law. They wanted revocation of the Citizenship Act, 2019, which many constitutional experts believe violates Article 14 and Article 15 of the Constitution. There was no legal wrong in the protest; the wrong lay in how the state responded to it.
In Ramlila Maidan Incident vs. Home Secretary, Union of India & Ors., the Supreme Court held that citizens have a fundamental right to assemble and peaceful protest that cannot be arbitrarily curtailed by executive or legislative action.
In Maneka Gandhi vs. Union of India, Justice P N Bhagwati observed, “If democracy means government of the people, by the people, it is obvious that every citizen must have the right to participate in the democratic process and, to allow him to intelligently exercise his right to make a choice, a free and general discussion of public issues is absolutely essential.”
These Supreme Court pronouncements reaffirm the constitutional guarantee that citizens have the right to protest whenever the need arises. These protests help strengthen the country’s democracy and allow space for peaceful dissent, which not only protects the rights of citizens but also helps expose and remedy institutional failures.
What the State Did Wrong
In 2020, the police’s use of excessive force on peaceful protesters was widely condemned. Yet no impartial investigation was conducted into the anti-Muslim violence, which reportedly killed scores of people and injured many more.
Just like the 2026 protest, the one in 2020 was led by students and youth, not by any political party. Activists, students and youth involved in the 2020 protest were charged with alleged offences of sedition and terrorism under the Unlawful Activities Act (UAPA) and the National Security Act (NSA). Despite the Supreme Court’s repeated warnings that UAPA cannot be used as a tool to suppress dissent, the government continues to employ it against peaceful protesters. Moreover, despite repeated calls for the release of students in 2020 by national and international human rights groups, the protesters remained in prolonged pre-trial detention.
The defence argued that prolonged incarceration could justify bail, relying on the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling in Syed Iftikhar Andrabi vs. NIA (2026 INSC 503), which reaffirmed the principle that prolonged incarceration could justify bail. Yet the trial court declined to examine this argument. Student activists Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and others were present in the 2026 protest, not physically, but in the constitutional consciousness of the students because of how the government had exercised its powers in detaining them without trial.
In Md. Rahim Ali @ Abdur Rahim vs. The State of Assam 7 S.C.R. 2337, the court clarified that the burden to prove citizenship can be discharged only after the State has first shared the material on which the allegation is founded. The court famously asked: “Does Section 9 of the Foreigners Act empower the Executive to pick a person at random, knock at his/her door, tell him/her, ‘We suspect you of being a foreigner,’ and then rest easy based on Section 9?” This question exposes the government’s astonishing lack of accountability. If the State can accuse anyone without evidence, demand proof without sharing a basis, and ruin lives without answering why, then the Constitution becomes a theatre where the State plays judge, jury, and executioner, while citizens are left to prove their own existence.
This case of Md. Rahim Ali explicitly restrains the State from arbitrarily accusing individuals of being foreigners without material evidence. Yet, in the case of anti-CAA protesters, many of whom were Muslims and charged under UAPA with no material evidence, this same principle is being ignored and they have not received judicial protection.
In Amit Sahni vs. Commissioner of Police & Others 2020 INSC 579 12 SCR 151, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari held that “public ways and public spaces cannot be occupied in such a manner and that too indefinitely.”
The Supreme Court was not so much concerned about the constitutionality of the protest or illegal detention, but about the inconvenience caused to commuters by the Shaheen Bagh protesters. Mediators, senior advocate Sanjay R Hegde and mediator-trainer Sadhana Ramachandran, were appointed to politely ask women to leave the protest site and excessive force was used to remove them. The interlocutors’ job, as the Solicitor General clarified, was “to persuade the protesters to vacate the road, not to find alternatives to the blocked roads”. The court appreciated their efforts, stating that “their job was to instil confidence among the protesters that they have the right to protest but not at this place.” But this reasoning was questionable as the judgment was silent on the factual basis of the assertion that protesters had blocked the public way and, importantly, the interlocutors’ report was never made public. The court elevated the rights of commuters to something like a fundamental right, while simultaneously diluting the fundamental rights of protesters under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b).
The Supreme Court maintained its sovereignty by reminding that comparing the government to colonial rulers was not allowed, and the 2026 protest happened very differently. Thousands of NEET protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar, blocked roads, demanded the minister’s resignation and the Supreme Court chose to “not watch videos.” No mediator, no ruling against public spaces, no concern for commuters, no dialogue on the government being worse than colonisers.
The court, it appears, suffers from a curious case of selective vision; it sees cockroaches only when they belong to a certain community and remains conveniently blind when the protests are too large, too diverse, and too politically costly to touch. The Constitution, it seems, applies only to those who are politically convenient to protect. Hence, the reckoning remains unfinished.
By contrast, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) condemned the use of excessive force against student protesters. SCAORA emphasised that peaceful dissent is protected under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b) of the Constitution, and that any restriction on peaceful assemblies must satisfy the constitutional requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality — but this was selectively ignored and entirely denied in the case of anti-CAA activists.
The Unfinished Reckoning
The success of the 2026 protest still reflects the horrors of the one in 2020 in the form of a communal narrative because the pattern was unmistakable. A Muslim volunteer was targeted not for what he did but for who he was. His family was harassed not because they had broken the law, but because they were related to a minority. Karnataka BJP MLC C T Ravi asked: “What is the connection between a Mulla and the NEET examination?” This is the horror that makes a community sceptical about participating. Hence, the flaw was never in the legal basis of the protest but in what is politically safe for the State to suppress and what is politically costly to ignore.
The judgments are clear and principles are sound, but the law is only as good as its enforcement, which depends on who is protesting. In the Md. Rahim Ali case, the Supreme Court explicitly restrained the State from accusing individuals of being foreigners without material evidence. In the Amit Sahni case, the court was hyper-interventionist but only when the protesters were Muslim women blocking the road. When not only the State but the court also chooses to enforce the law unequally, it betrays the Constitution and turns citizens into subjects.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
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Iqra Rozy is a legal researcher and. her research focus is on constitutional law, criminal justice, and civil liberties. Her academic work examines the gap between ‘law in books and law in practice.’ The views expressed here are solely her own. She can be contacted at [email protected]
