Navdeep Mathur v. State of Gujarat: rolling Section 144 orders and the publicity mandate

The facts in brief

The power to issue urgent prohibitory orders in cases of apprehended nuisance or danger is one of the oldest tools of preventive policing in India. Under Section 144 of the 1973 Code of Criminal Procedure — and now Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which carries the same power into the new code — a magistrate or empowered officer may direct any person to abstain from a certain act, where there is sufficient ground and immediate prevention is desirable. In Gujarat, Section 37 of the Gujarat Police Act, 1951 gives the Commissioner of Police a parallel power to prohibit assemblies and processions.

By design these are emergency measures, limited in time. But in Ahmedabad they had become something else. Over an extended period the City Police repeatedly issued prohibitory notifications restricting assemblies, processions and gatherings across the city — each new order taking effect as the previous one lapsed. Cumulatively, public assembly in the city stood barred for years on end.

The petitioners, Navdeep Mathur and others, challenged the practice before the High Court. They contended that the police were deploying an emergency, time-bound power as a permanent governance tool — issuing successive orders without recording fresh, specific material to justify each one, and without giving the public meaningful notice of what was actually prohibited.

Justice M.R. Mengdey heard the matter and delivered judgment on 4 December 2025, quashing the impugned notifications — including an order dated 3 November 2025 issued by the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad City — and laying down forward-looking directions for any future invocation of the power.

The statutory safeguards built into the power

The case rests on a feature of Section 144 / Section 163 that is sometimes forgotten: the power is hedged by safeguards precisely because it is so capable of abuse. The order must rest on a genuine, contemporaneously assessed apprehension. It is temporary — an order under the section endures for a limited statutory period and cannot be extended indefinitely. And the officer issuing it must apply his mind to the particular circumstances, not invoke the power as a reflex.

The Supreme Court has read these limits closely. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, the Court insisted that an order under Section 144 must satisfy the tests of necessity and proportionality, must be supported by reasons, and is amenable to judicial review — emergency power is not a licence for open-ended restriction. The Ramlila Maidan line had earlier warned against the mechanical, large-scale use of the provision against peaceful assembly.

Justice Mengdey carried those safeguards into the BNSS era. The continuity between Section 144 CrPC and Section 163 BNSS meant that the proportionality and reasoned-order discipline the Supreme Court had built around the old provision applied with full force to the new one.

What the Court held

The High Court held that the city police had been issuing overlapping orders under Section 144 CrPC (now Section 163 BNSS) and Section 37 of the Gujarat Police Act "one after the other," creating in effect a continuous, years-long prohibition on public assembly. That rolling pattern circumvented the statutory safeguards. Orders under the section are meant to be temporary, exceptional and tied to a genuine, freshly recorded apprehension of danger — not a standing tool of administration.

The repeated, mechanical re-issuance of orders without fresh application of mind, the Court held, violated citizens' fundamental rights to assembly, movement and expression under Article 19, and their liberty under Article 21. The impugned notifications, including the 3 November 2025 order, were quashed.

The publicity mandate

The second strand of the judgment is its most innovative. The Court held that mere publication in the official gazette is constitutionally insufficient when an order restricts fundamental rights. A citizen cannot be expected to consult the gazette to learn what is prohibited; if the public does not know the content of a restriction, the restriction cannot fairly bind them.

Prohibitory orders restricting fundamental rights, the Court directed, must be actively and widely publicised — by physical notices displayed at prominent places, by publication in newspapers, by broadcast on radio and television, and by circulation on official websites and social-media channels, in both Gujarati and English. The Court framed this as a procedural-due-process requirement: wide, multi-channel, bilingual notice so that the public can actually know what is barred and conform their conduct accordingly.

These directions were issued prospectively, binding future invocations of Section 163 BNSS in the city.

Why this matters

The judgment is a significant early-BNSS-era constitutional check on the routine, prophylactic deployment of prohibitory orders by metropolitan police commissionerates. The habit of back-to-back Section 144 / 163 orders is not unique to Ahmedabad; commissionerates in several large cities have maintained near-permanent prohibitory regimes through serial re-issuance. By naming that practice as a colourable circumvention of a time-bound power, the ruling supplies a template for challenges elsewhere.

The publicity directions are concrete and replicable. Physical notices, newspaper publication, broadcast, website and social-media circulation in two languages — these are not abstract aspirations but enforceable conditions that other courts can adopt and police forces can be held to. They graft a transparency safeguard onto a power that has historically operated in the relative obscurity of the gazette.

The wider trajectory

The decision is a leading state-level application of Anuradha Bhasin to the new criminal code, and it feeds the broader 2025–26 jurisprudence on proportionality and procedural safeguards under the BNSS. The State may consider carrying the matter further, and commissionerates across Gujarat — and potentially beyond — will need to revise their notification practice to record case-specific reasons for each order and to publicise it through the channels the Court specified.

For the constitutional law of preventive policing, the ruling reinforces a simple proposition that bears repeating in the BNSS era: a power justified only by emergency loses its justification the moment it becomes routine.

Related on Valkya

• Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India: internet as an Article 19 right
• Shreya Singhal v. Union of India: striking down Section 66A
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India: the nine-judge privacy declaration

Sources

1. CJP — "Gujarat High Court slams 'mechanical' use of Section 144, says emergency powers cannot become normal governance": https://cjp.org.in/gujarat-high-court-slams-mechanical-use-of-section-144-says-emergency-powers-cannot-become-normal-governance/
2. LiveLaw — Gujarat High Court coverage: https://www.livelaw.in/high-court/gujarat-high-court
3. Supreme Court Observer — Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India case page: https://www.scobserver.in/cases/anuradha-bhasin-union-of-india-internet-ban-jammu-and-kashmir/
4. Bar & Bench — Gujarat High Court coverage: https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation