The army approached HYDRAA for help; the court went to the army

The Telangana High Court’s direction on July 23, in the Lothukunta land dispute sits at the intersection of two important concerns that pull in opposite directions: a genuine institutional problem of apparent, repeated disregard for judicial orders by a state agency, and a serious constitutional question about whether the remedy chosen — directing deployment of the Indian Army to guard a disputed private property — falls within the proper scope of a High Court’s authority. Both deserve separate and careful consideration.

The facts stated carefully:

The dispute concerns approximately 40 acres in Survey Nos. 1 and 2 of Lothukunta village, Secunderabad, claimed by M/s Shantha Sriram Constructions Pvt. Ltd. The petitioner filed what has been reported as the third contempt petition against HYDRAA Commissioner A V Ranganath arising from the same underlying writ proceedings. The petitioner alleged that despite an undertaking given to the court — through HYDRAA’s Standing Counsel — that officials would not interfere with its possession of the land, approximately 200 HYDRAA personnel accompanied by over 50 vehicles, bulldozers, and excavators entered the property on July 18, demolished compound walls, CCTV cameras, gates, and electrical installations, and sought to take possession of the land, asserting it to be government property. HYDRAA, for its part, subsequently clarified that its July 18 operations were conducted at GLR Nos. 243 and 255 — a site it stated was located approximately three km from Survey Nos. 1 and 2 — and that the two sites are distinct. That factual dispute remains live before the court.

Justice Jukanti Anil Kumar, hearing the matter on July 23, directed the Registrar General of the High Court to contact the senior-most Brigadier of the Bison Division to obtain a list of ten army personnel to be posted at the disputed site. The court stated that army personnel, if deployed, could take into custody anyone entering the land in violation of its orders, including HYDRAA officials, and that vehicles brought to the site could also be seized. Significantly, the court itself acknowledged on record that it was “conscious” that the army ordinarily has no business in such matters. The Advocate General’s assurance that there would be no further interference then led the court to defer — rather than formally execute — the direction. What is on record, therefore, appears to be an oral direction held in abeyance, not a concluded operative order formally deploying the Army.

Nothing that follows should be read as minimising HYDRAA’s alleged conduct. If the reported sequence is accurate — an undertaking given to the court, followed within days by a large-scale entry involving 200 personnel and heavy machinery — that is precisely the kind of willful disobedience the contempt jurisdiction exists to address. Three contempt petitions arising from the same writ proceedings are not an isolated lapse; they suggest an agency treating court orders as negotiable. The court’s documented frustration, and its firm on-the-record rebuke of the commissioner’s alleged conduct, are well within the institutional latitude that courts must have to uphold the authority of their orders.

The concern here is a narrower, structural one: it relates not to the court’s assessment of HYDRAA’s conduct, but to the constitutional placement of the remedy it reached for.

The deployment of the armed forces of the Union within a state — even in aid of the civil power — is governed by Entry 2A of List I of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, introduced by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment. That entry specifically covers “deployment of any armed force of the Union or any other force subject to the control of the Union or any contingent or unit thereof in any State in aid of the civil power; powers, jurisdiction, privileges and liabilities of the members of such forces while on such deployment.” This is unambiguously a Union function.

Correspondingly, Entry 1 of List II — the State List — covers public order, but explicitly carves out the use of armed forces in aid of civil power, precisely because the Constitution’s framers intended that decisions about deploying Union military resources within a state would remain in Union hands.

Established constitutional doctrine and aid-to-civil-power practice are clear: the army acts on formal requisition through civilian channels — ordinarily through the state government, with appropriate Union government involvement. The constitutional scheme does not contemplate a High Court Registrar General directly contacting a formation commander to secure army personnel for a civil property dispute.

The day’s own news supplies a pointed irony. On July 23, Lieutenant Colonel Jai Singh personally met HYDRAA Commissioner Ranganath and submitted a representation alleging that a G+2 structure was being constructed without permission on A-1 category Army land in GLR Survey No. 507 in Quthbullapur mandal. The army was, in other words, seeking HYDRAA’s civilian administrative assistance to protect its own defence land from encroachment. An institution that itself turns to a state disaster-response agency for help with its property is not, by constitutional position or operational design, one that can simultaneously be deployed at a private developer’s disputed plot on the oral direction of a single-judge bench.

The remedies available constitutionally:

None of this leaves the court without recourse. The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, provides calibrated and graduated tools that are directly available. Section 12 authorises punishment for contempt by simple imprisonment extending up to six months, a fine extending up to Rs 2,000 or both. For civil contempt specifically, where a fine would not meet the ends of justice, the court may direct detention in a civil prison for a period not exceeding six months. Beyond custodial consequences, courts have at their disposal coercive fines, structured compliance timelines, cost orders, and directions requiring the government to explain in writing why an officer should not face personal contempt liability.

These remedies draw on the police and prison machinery that Entries 2 and 4 of the State List — covering police and prisons and related institutions respectively — place within the constitutional enforcement reach of the courts. They are less immediately dramatic than summoning a military formation. But their constitutional grounding is unimpeachable.

The distinction worth preserving:

Firm judicial response to institutional defiance is a constitutional imperative. The Telangana High Court’s documented frustration at HYDRAA’s alleged pattern of conduct is understandable, and its on-the-record rebuke serves the vital function of signalling to state agencies that court orders carry enforceable consequence. The constitutional concern that the July 23 direction raises is the narrower, architectural one: whether the instrument of army deployment — even as a deferred oral direction — falls within the proper authority of a High Court in a civil property dispute, given where the Constitution places both the armed forces and the authority to direct their use.

Courts protect their institutional authority most durably not by reaching for the most visible instrument available, but by deploying — consistently and firmly — the instruments that constitutionally belong to them. The HYDRAA case has raised questions that deserve, and will benefit from, careful and considered answers.

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