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Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Aug 27

#StoryAlert 🚨

If the nation’s highest judicial chair is surrendered to a candidate of gravely doubtful integrity, Chief Justice B.R. Gavai’s name will be etched as the man who bartered it away.

Will he now hold any moral authority to invoke the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar in his many lectures? To preside over compromise of possibly the highest evil while preaching constitutional fidelity would be nothing short of desecration.

My piece, for the @frontline_india. A 🧵.

Link—frontline.thehindu.com/columns/suprem…

The government was very keen on elevating Justice Vipul M. Pancholi to the Supreme Court in May 2025. However, Justice Nagarathna and with Justice Vikram Nath opposed. Justice Nagarathna stood her ground and blocked the proposal.

The government relented only when she, and the rest of the Collegium, agreed to Karnataka High Court Chief Justice N.V. Anjaria’s elevation to the Supreme Court. Anjaria’s parent High Court is also Gujarat.

Justice Nagarathna was apparently assured that a compromise on Anjaria meant that Pancholi’s candidature would be shelved.

However, to her utter surprise, Chief Justice Pancholi’s name surfaced again, mere three months later, and the other Collegium members—Chief Justice Gavai, and Justices Surya Kant, Nath, and J.K. Maheshwari—voted in his favour.

Read 12 tweets

Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Aug 24

#StoryAlert 🚨

Surendra Gadling’s bail application has become a Kafkaesque file in the Supreme Court. It appears on the cause list, only to vanish. It is mentioned, only to be deferred. It is scheduled, only to be adjourned. The judge presiding over it, Justice M.M. Sundresh, has turned the very act of not hearing into a form of adjudication. A 🧵.

My tenth 'Case In Point' column for the @frontline_india—frontline.thehindu.com/columns/suprem…

Gadling, a human rights activist, has been in jail under UAPA charges in the Bhima Koregaon case for over seven years now. His bail in another case of arson from 2016 was rejected by the Bombay High Court in February 2023. His appeal has since been pending in the Supreme Court, without a hearing.

The bail plea has been listed 17 times since it was first filed in August 2023.

Of them, 13 times before Justice Sundresh’s bench.

Four times, the matter was not listed despite a promise to list.

When liberty itself is at stake, such judicial lethargy begins to look less like a usual delay and more like a deliberate design.

Read 14 tweets

Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Aug 6

#StoryAlert 🚨

Once again, a Chief Justice of India finds himself in the throes of a propriety crisis. An important case has somehow made its way before Chief Justice Gavai’s bench, in violation of Supreme Court’s own rules and convention.

Chief Justice Gavai must face an uncomfortable question: Is he any better than his predecessors?

A thread. 🧵

Link—frontline.thehindu.com/columns/cji-b-…

1/16

The controversy stems from the aftermath of a remarkable May 2025 judgment known as the Vanashakti case, delivered by a Bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka, consisting Justice Ujjal Bhuyan.

In short, the judgment struck down as “illegal” a 2017 and 2021 procedure systemised by the Environment Ministry for ex-post facto environmental clearance. Any company that failed to get env clearance *prior* to starting the project could do so under the regime after paying a penalty.

2/16

The judgment held this system—which legalised the corporates’ sins later by obtaining clearance post hoc—to be illegal. Remarkably, it also restrained the Union Government from coming up with a similar system in future. Justice Oka retired shortly after this judgment.

3/16

Read 17 tweets

Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Feb 28

#StoryAlert 🚨

The many analyses explaining the Aam Aadmi Party’s poll debacle in Delhi are missing one important player – the Supreme Court. While it dilly-dallied on fixing the grave constitutional crisis, governance suffered. A thread.

thewire.in/law/supreme-co…

It’s not that AAP has never delivered on its promises; Delhi’s health and education landscape saw great changes. But, beginning 2015, bit by bit, the elected government’s powers to govern had been taken away by the Union government, and the judiciary allowed this to happen.

It began in May 2015, with a circular that took away the newly elected @ArvindKejriwal government. What followed was a contentious battle in court. Several hurdles were posed by the bureaucrats. Read more about this in the piece.

Read 15 tweets

Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Feb 19

#MyPiece🚨

It is rather rich of the Supreme Court to preach morality when, not too long ago, not a single Supreme Court judge publicly objected to their Chief Justice presiding over cases despite serious allegations of sexual harassment. 1/10

thewire.in/law/supreme-co…

The condition imposed on @BeerBicepsGuy and "his associates" to not air "any shows " for the time being until further orders is a sweeping condition.

One would expect the highest court to explain why it deemed it necessary to bar someone from their profession and gag their future speech-both fundamental rights. 2/10

Yet, the Supreme Court imposed this condition arbitrarily – paternalistic, sweeping, and entirely unaccountable – emblematic of its mai-baap approach, wherein it sees itself as the ultimate arbiter of all things, unburdened by the need to justify its own excesses. 3/10

Read 11 tweets

Saurav Das

@SauravDassss

Jan 5

#YearInReview: 2024 was profoundly meaningful. I worked on 2 long-form stories—investigating extrajudicial killings and police shootouts in Uttar Pradesh and profiling CJI DY Chandrachud—both of which took 4 months each, eventually published at 6,000 & 16,000 words.

A thread.

In January, for @AJEnglish, I reported how the three new criminal laws and the Telecom Act have the potential to turn India into a Police and Surveillance state. Concern for civil liberty continue.
aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/17…

In February, for @Article14live, I reported on the blocking of hate-crime documenter @HindutvaWatchIn's X account and website. I highlighted the loopholes in existing laws that allow the govt such drastic, arbitrary measures.
article-14.com/post/takedown-…

Read 23 tweets

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