Baksish Ahmad v. Union of India (2026): a CAPF member may invoke the Delhi High Court's writ jurisdiction though the cause of action arose elsewhere

Baksish Ahmad v. Union of India is a short but consequential correction on where a member of a Central Armed Police Force may go to litigate a service grievance. A Border Security Force constable, dismissed for contracting a second marriage without permission, had carried his challenge to the Delhi High Court. That court declined to hear him — not for want of jurisdiction, but on the discretionary ground that Delhi was an inconvenient forum, the relevant events having occurred in West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir. On 9 June 2026 a Division Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma set that order aside, restored the writ petition to the Delhi High Court's file, and held that where writ jurisdiction is validly attracted under clause (1) of Article 226 by the presence of the necessary respondent authorities, the doctrine of forum non conveniens should rarely be used to turn the litigant away.

The facts in brief

The appellant, Baksish Ahmad, was a BSF constable. A Staff Court of Inquiry found that he had contracted a second marriage during the subsistence of his first, and without the permission of the competent authority — conduct treated as misconduct under the Border Security Force framework read with the conduct rules applicable to government servants. He was dismissed from service in October 2022 while posted in West Bengal. His statutory petition against the dismissal was rejected by the Inspector General at the Frontier Headquarters of the BSF at Jammu.

Aggrieved, Ahmad invoked the writ jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court under Article 226, impleading the Union of India and the Director General, BSF — both of whose principal offices are in Delhi. The Delhi High Court, however, declined to entertain the petition. Its reasoning was that the operative events had taken place elsewhere: the dismissal in West Bengal, the rejection of the statutory petition in Jammu & Kashmir. On that footing the High Court concluded that Delhi was not the convenient forum and relegated the petitioner to a High Court having territorial jurisdiction over the places where those events occurred.

The question

The dispute did not turn on whether the Delhi High Court had jurisdiction. Article 226(2), inserted by the Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act 1963, extends a High Court's writ power to any authority whose situs lies within its territory, even if the cause of action arose elsewhere; and clause (1), as has long been understood, fixes jurisdiction by reference to the location of the authority against whom relief is sought. With the Union of India and the BSF's national headquarters located in Delhi, the Delhi High Court plainly answered that description.

The real question was a different one: having jurisdiction, could the High Court decline to exercise it on the discretionary ground that another forum, closer to the events, was more appropriate? In other words, how far does the doctrine of forum non conveniens travel when what is being pursued is a constitutional remedy under Article 226(1), and not an ordinary action whose forum is chosen for convenience?

What the Court held

The Court answered that the discretion to decline a validly-invoked writ jurisdiction is a narrow one. It located the Delhi High Court's jurisdiction squarely in the situs of the respondent authorities and held that the High Court ought not to have shut its doors on convenience grounds alone.

The reasoning proceeds from the structure of Article 226 itself. Clause (1) confers jurisdiction by reference to the authority against whom the writ runs; clause (2) is an enlarging provision that adds the place where the cause of action arose. The presence of either is sufficient. Once a High Court is validly seized on the strength of the respondents' situs, the constitutional character of the remedy weighs against turning the petitioner away merely because some other court is geographically nearer to the events. Forum non conveniens — a discretionary doctrine drawn from private-law forum disputes — does not sit easily on top of a jurisdiction that the Constitution has itself conferred for the vindication of rights. The Bench accordingly set aside the High Court's order and restored the writ petition for adjudication on its merits, leaving the substantive challenge to the dismissal to be decided afresh.

Analysis

The decision sits within a long and not always consistent line on Article 226 territorial jurisdiction. The foundational propositions are settled: that part of a cause of action arising within a High Court's territory suffices under clause (2) (Kusum Ingots & Alloys Ltd v. Union of India, (2004) 6 SCC 254); that the situs of the authority anchors jurisdiction under clause (1); and that even where jurisdiction exists, a High Court retains a discretion, on forum non conveniens principles, to relegate a petitioner to a more appropriate forum. Kusum Ingots itself recognised that discretion. The tension Baksish Ahmad addresses is the gap between having the discretion and the readiness with which High Courts have exercised it to decline service writs against centrally-headquartered authorities.

What the Court has done is not to abolish the discretion but to discipline it. By tying the analysis to the constitutional character of the Article 226(1) remedy, the Bench signals that where jurisdiction is grounded in the respondents' situs, declining to hear the matter on convenience grounds should be the rare exception rather than a reflexive first response. That is a meaningful recalibration: it shifts the default. A High Court validly seized of a CAPF service matter should ordinarily decide it, and must point to something more than the bare fact that the events happened elsewhere before sending the litigant away.

The judgment also speaks to a structural feature peculiar to the Central Armed Police Forces. Unlike the armed forces, whose members have a dedicated forum in the Armed Forces Tribunal, CAPF personnel litigate their service grievances through the ordinary writ route. Their deployment is geographically dispersed — frontiers, internal-security postings, transfers across states — while command and the authorities who pass the impugned orders are concentrated in Delhi. A rule that pushes such a litigant back to whichever High Court covers the place of an isolated event fragments access to justice for a class of servants whose work is, by design, mobile. Locating jurisdiction in the situs of the headquarters answers that reality.

Why it matters

For the CAPF litigant the practical effect is direct: a constable dismissed at a remote posting, whose statutory appeal is rejected at a frontier headquarters in yet another state, may bring the whole matter to the Delhi High Court where the Union and the force command sit — and can expect that court to hear it rather than to relegate him on convenience grounds. That consolidates what had become an uncertain area, in which the same kind of petition might be entertained or refused depending on the bench's view of where the dispute "really" belonged.

More broadly, the decision tightens the use of forum non conveniens across Article 226 practice. Respondents who have, in service and regulatory litigation, routinely raised the inconvenience of the chosen High Court will now have to do more than gesture at the geography of the cause of action. Where the petitioner's invocation of writ jurisdiction is traceable to clause (1) and a constitutional remedy is genuinely at stake, the threshold for declining to hear the case has been raised. The ruling does not displace the settled learning that part of a cause of action arising within the territory will independently sustain jurisdiction under clause (2); it adds, on the discretion side, a clear instruction that the constitutional remedy is not to be lightly turned away.

Related on Valkya

• United Bank of India v. Satyawati Tondon: writ self-restraint in SARFAESI matters
• Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India: OBC reservation in higher education
• Pradeep Jain v. Union of India: domicile and reservation

Sources

• LiveLaw, "CAPF Personnel Can Approach Delhi High Court For Service Disputes Though Cause Of Action Arose Outside: Supreme Court"
• LiveLaw, "2026 LiveLaw (SC) 616 | Baksish Ahmad v. Union of India & Anr."
• Bar & Bench, "Delhi High Court can hear CAPF cases even if cause of action arose elsewhere: Supreme Court"
• SCC Online Blog, "CAPF Personnel Can Approach Delhi High Court's Writ Jurisdiction in Service Matters Despite Cause of Action Arising Elsewhere: Supreme Court"