Judicial overreach: When Bench becomes the Executive

There is something deeply troubling that is unfolding in the corridors of the Telangana High Court — and it is not simply the conduct of HYDRAA Commissioner A V Ranganath, though his repeated defiance of judicial directions is indefensible and deserves the most serious legal consequences the law permits. What is equally troubling, and what has received far less scrutiny, is whether Justice Jukanti Anil Kumar, in his evident concern at an agency that has treated court orders as optional, has himself crossed constitutional lines that no judge — however provoked by persistent non-compliance — may permissibly cross.

The facts are well established. Shanta Sriram Constructions Private Limited has filed multiple contempt petitions alleging that HYDRAA officials entered 40 acres of private land at Lothukunta village in Medchal-Malkajgiri district in brazen defiance of subsisting judicial orders. The property’s character as private land had been upheld through multiple proceedings, including a writ appeal. HYDRAA, evidently emboldened by state support, kept returning. The Commissioner filed affidavits the court described as casual, incomplete, and devoid of sincere and timely apology. By any reasonable measure, this is contempt of the most serious kind. Justice Anil Kumar’s strong reaction is entirely understandable: no court can function when its orders are treated as mere suggestions by agencies acting under political cover.

But the remedy must stay within constitutional bounds. Two directions issued by Justice Anil Kumar — one directing removal from office and the other ordering army deployment — raise serious constitutional concerns that demand examination.

The removal direction-A jurisdictional question:

Justice Anil Kumar has directed the Telangana government to remove Ranganath from his post as HYDRAA Commissioner and replace him with a “suitable person.” This raises a fundamental question of constitutional competence, and it matters not how richly the officer’s conduct may have warranted strong judicial response.

Article 215 of the Constitution, which is the constitutional foundation of a High Court’s contempt power, states: “Every High Court shall be a court of record and shall have all the powers of such a court including the power to punish for contempt of itself.” The key word is punish — and the outer limit of that punishment is exhaustively defined by Section 12(1) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, which reads: “Save as otherwise expressly provided in this Act or in any other law, a contempt of court may be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to two thousand rupees, or with both.”

Section 12(2) further provides: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force, no court shall impose a sentence in excess of that specified in sub-section (1) for any contempt either in respect of itself or of a court subordinate to it.”

There is no provision in the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 — or in any other Indian law — that authorises a court to order the removal of a government officer from a statutory or executive post as a punishment for contempt. The punishment the law grants is imprisonment and fine. Removal from office is not a contempt sanction. It lies outside the statutory framework entirely.

The constitutional barrier is equally clear. Article 311(1) of the Constitution provides in exact terms: “No person who is a member of a civil service of the Union or an all-India service or a civil service of a State or holds a civil post under the Union or a State shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed.”

A High Court is not the appointing authority of an IPS officer. The removal of a government servant — particularly one appointed to an IPS post or by state executive authority — is an executive function. No recourse to contempt jurisdiction converts it into a judicial one.

The Supreme Court addressed precisely this structural boundary in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Association of Retired Supreme Court and High Court Judges at Allahabad (2024 INSC 4), where a constitution bench set aside orders of the Allahabad High Court that had attempted to compel the State Government to notify rules under the threat of criminal contempt. The court was direct: The High Court, acting on the judicial side, cannot compel the State Government to exercise its executive functions. It further held that “the conduct of the High Court in frequently summoning government officials to exert pressure on the government, under the threat of contempt, is impermissible.”

If compelling a government to notify rules is beyond High Court contempt jurisdiction, then compelling a government to remove one of its senior officers and replace him with a suitable person of the court’s satisfaction is an even more direct encroachment into the domain of executive governance.

The army order: A clear constitutional transgression:

On July 23, the court directed the Registrar General of the Telangana High Court to contact the Brigadier of the Bison Brigade and ascertain whether ten Army personnel could be made available to protect the disputed private property. These orders were kept in abeyance after the Advocate General’s intervention and recalled on July 24.

That the court itself retracted the order is to be noted. But the constitutional problem is not neutralised by retraction alone. Under Entry 2A, List I (Seventh Schedule), inserted by the 42nd Amendment (1976, w.e.f. 3-1-1977), deployment of armed forces in a State is exclusively a Union function. Correspondingly, Entry 1, List II excludes state competence over armed forces in aid of civil power. Article 257-A (inserted same amendment, omitted 1978) clarified that deployed forces remain under Union control, not state superintendence. This constitutional architecture vests deployment authority exclusively in the Union Government. A High Court — being neither the Union Government nor the appointing authority — lacks power to direct military deployment or requisition armed personnel for civil disputes.

What the court can — and should — do:

The court has ample, entirely constitutional options. It may impose imprisonment under Section 12 (1) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. It may impose a statutory fine. It may direct the State Government — as a recommendation, not a command — to initiate departmental disciplinary proceedings against the officer under the applicable service rules. It may place its findings of repeated, deliberate contempt on the public record in a manner that carries its own weight in the domain of public accountability and administrative consequence. These are powerful remedies. They do not require the court to assume functions the Constitution vests elsewhere.

The deeper institutional stakes:

There is something historically significant in this episode. A state agency that treats court orders as optional — backed by a government that offers assurances through its Advocate General and then watches its agency violate them again — corrodes the rule of law from below. A court that responds by reaching beyond its constitutional perimeter risks corroding it from above. Both deserve careful institutional attention.

The Constitution created these boundaries not to protect defiant public officers but to preserve the architecture of democratic governance itself.

If courts could remove government officers, deploy armies, and substitute their judgment for that of the executive in personnel matters, the separation of powers — which the Supreme Court has consistently held to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution — would cease to have practical meaning. Those boundaries, respectfully observed, are themselves part of what makes the rule of law worth defending.

(The writer is with the Cholleti BlackRobe Chambers, Hyderabad, and writes on economy, politics and law)