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• RECENT SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENTS AND ORDERS ON THE CJP PROTESTS

  V. Mishra, I. Judicial Forum

  IJF (2026). 1

  
  

  Abstract

  This article examines the Supreme Court of India’s recent intervention in litigation arising from the 2026 student protests associated with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), with particular attention to the Court’s orders of 28 July, 18 August and 1 September 2026 in Shailendra Mani Tripathi v. Union of India and connected proceedings. The litigation raises an unusually dense cluster of constitutional questions: the relationship between Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b); the State’s duty to maintain public order; limits on police crowd-control powers; the use of pellet guns, tear gas, lathis and other force; protection of minors; publication and retention of protesters’ personal data; and the exceptional remedial authority under Article 142. The paper situates the 2026 proceedings within the Supreme Court’s longer jurisprudence on protest, including Himmat Lal K. Shah, Ramlila Maidan Incident, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Anita Thakur and Amit Sahni (Shaheen Bagh). It also engages with recent legal scholarship on Shaheen Bagh, public order and legal mobilisation. The central argument is that the 2026 orders should not be read as creating an unqualified right to protest or as immunising violence. Rather, they deepen an emerging constitutional model in which peaceful dissent receives affirmative protection, State restrictions must remain connected to genuine public-order concerns, police force must be necessary and proportionate, protester data requires constitutional safeguards, and remedial relief may be calibrated to protect the future of young participants without extinguishing accountability for grave criminal conduct. The 18 August order is particularly significant because it constituted a High-Powered Enquiry Committee (HPEC) and identified issues extending beyond individual criminal liability: proportionality of force, use of metallic projectiles, visible identification of police personnel, surveillance, treatment of women protesters, compensation, blanket prohibitory orders, and possible misuse of Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The 1 September order then used Article 142 to quash protest-related FIRs and extend closure to other FIRs concerning the same July incidents, while retaining a carve-out concerning 2,873 persons identified by Delhi Police and directing a pan-India compensation policy for families affected by NEET-UG-related student suicides. The article concludes that the litigation may become a leading contemporary authority on the constitutional governance of protest in the digital-surveillance era, but that its lasting doctrinal value will depend on the HPEC’s findings and the Court’s eventual resolution of the pending constitutional questions.

  Abstract
  This article examines the Supreme Court of India’s recent intervention in litigation arising from the 2026 student protests associated with the Cockroach Janta Party [...]

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