From Aravallis to Kuldeep Sengar: What Supreme Court’s interim orders tell us about its relationship with society

Law regulates social relationships, either through legislation or through principles evolved by courts. Constitutional courts, in particular, animate static statutory texts by interpreting provisions where no settled meaning exists, enabling the law to fulfil its purpose. The Supreme Court’s two interim orders of December 29, one staying the Delhi High Court’s suspension of Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s sentence, and the other keeping its own Aravalli mining judgment in abeyance, illustrate this function in practice. Operating in distinct domains, both orders reflect the SC’s effort to balance stability with change in the face of legal uncertainty and, in doing so, to bridge the enduring gap between law and lived social reality, a task central to the judicial role.

Consider first the Aravalli stay order. In a rare display of judicial humility, a three-judge vacation bench of the SC stayed the operational effect of its own November 20 judgment of equal bench strength. While recognising the severe stress on the Aravallis’ inherently fragile ecosystem, the apex court took note of divergent definitions and ambiguity concerning the territorial demarcation of the range. It further recorded that the November 20 judgment had triggered a spate of petitions challenging the findings of the committee that had defined the “Aravalli Hills and Ranges”. In its prima facie assessment, the SC found that both the committee’s report and its earlier judgment omitted to expressly clarify certain critical issues. Pending such clarification, the top court kept its judgment in abeyance and imposed a ban on fresh mining.

The apex court appears to have acknowledged a practical reality: Once a regulatory framework is activated, it can produce irreversible administrative consequences. Its intervention underscores the need to preserve a “controllable baseline” before regulation is allowed to drift from its original position, a temporary holding arrangement that steers the legal system till the full merits of the law are tested or reviewed. Accordingly, judge-made law must ordinarily evolve with restraint, save in situations of pressing legal vacuum. The Bhanwari Devi case, which necessitated urgent intervention and resulted in the Vishaka guidelines on workplace sexual harassment, and petitions involving death row convicts, are illustrative exceptions. Such interventions, however, cannot become routine. Landmark exercises like Vishaka are meant to be exceptional. The reason is simple. It is the legislature that most directly reflects the real will of the people. However well-intentioned, judge-crafted frameworks issued at the drop of a hat risk being misunderstood or misapplied on the ground. Against this backdrop, the Aravalli stay, effected through an interim order within a month of the earlier judgment, creates an impression of judicial inconsistency, one that ought to be avoided to prevent erosion of public confidence, at large, and institutional propriety.

Turning to the stay order in Sengar’s case, which laid bare a prolonged struggle for justice, structural barriers and deep institutional failures in confronting entrenched power. At first blush, it appears to follow the conventional judicial hierarchy, with the SC stepping in to pause an HC order. In doing so, the top court expressly recognises the procedural baseline that a bail or sentence-suspension order should ordinarily not be stayed without hearing the released person, yet records exceptional facts and circumstances to justify the departure. The intervention seems aimed at preventing the justice system from being pushed into an avoidable and difficult-to-reverse situation. Central to the SC’s prima facie reasoning is the incongruity that, for determining guilt of a “public servant” for an aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the POCSO Act, a police constable or patwari qualifies as a “public servant,” whereas an MLA does not. Through this, the top court signals that hyper-technical interpretations must not defeat the object of a special, victim-centric statute designed to protect children, lest its salutary provisions be rendered dead letters.

To suggest that an MLA lacks the capacity to intimidate, coerce, or subvert procedural safeguards merely because he does not formally fall within the definition of “public servant” is unrealistic and fallacious. The SC has consistently warned against interpretive literalism that dilutes the protective architecture of the POCSO Act. In Attorney General for India v. Satish (2021), it overturned the Bombay HC’s untenable view that groping a minor through clothing, absent “skin-to-skin” contact, did not constitute “touch” or “physical contact” to attract the offence of sexual assault under Section 7 of POCSO. Likewise, in Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017), the SC adopted a harmonious and purposive approach to child-protection law by reading down Exception 2 to Section 375 IPC, which had exempted non-consensual sexual intercourse with a wife aged between 15 and 18 from the offence of rape. Holding the exception incompatible with the POCSO Act, which criminalises all sexual acts with persons under 18, the SC found it violative of Articles 14, 15, and 21, thereby foregrounding constitutional morality and legislative intent. Read together, these decisions reaffirm that where child protection is implicated, statutory interpretation must strengthen, not weaken, the law’s protective purpose.

One of the key takeaways from the apex court’s interim stay orders is the inherent complexity of law, shaped by an interplay of logic and experience. The unifying thread between both decisions is the SC’s “institutional reflex” when faced with a legal complexity. Both orders accentuate the rule of prudence that the courts should exercise restraint in creating an irreversible status quo and preserve a “controllable baseline” until some sort of clarity emerges. However, they also raise deeper concerns about India’s justice delivery system, particularly the problem of the finality of disputes. In Sengar’s case, despite a 53-page HC judgment engaging multiple facets of the issue, the appeal pending for over five years remains undecided. More broadly, the system appears increasingly congested by interlocutory orders, which, for varied reasons, have come to constitute the lived legal regime.

In this context, the interim orders also serve as a reminder that judicial decisions cannot bridge every gap between law and lived reality. At the same time, they effectively rebut the claim that the judiciary lacks institutional accountability. That accountability is evident in the Aravalli order, which expressly notes the widespread concern among environmentalists and the consequent need to clarify the regulatory vacuum. The orders reflect an acknowledgement that judges, like all mortals, can err, and that such errors are addressed through course correction within the judicial process. Yet, they also raise a legitimate concern: Should the SC’s move to act suo motu in response to public outcry become a recognised basis for urgency? If it does, what of equally serious matters that attract little spotlight? Are they truly less urgent or merely less visible?

Above all, these orders reveal a silver lining: The apex court’s institutional accessibility. Even during court vacations — which are not indulgences but structural safeguards for intellectual rejuvenation, careful judgment writing, and sustained legal research — urgent benches continue to operate to prevent injustice from crystallising into a fait accompli. In its role as a constitutional arbiter, the SC appears to maintain a parallel dialogue with society, case by case, reminding us, in Justice Jackson’s words about the US Supreme Court, that we are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.