The Indian Constitution was meant to protect citizens from arbitrary power; the bulldozer has come to symbolise its return. In recent years, India's skyline has changed not only through construction but through demolition, a spectacle where accusation replaces adjudication. When governments raze homes of those merely accused of crime, they bypass the courts and collapse the presumption...
The Indian Constitution was meant to protect citizens from arbitrary power; the bulldozer has come to symbolise its return. In recent years, India's skyline has changed not only through construction but through demolition, a spectacle where accusation replaces adjudication. When governments raze homes of those merely accused of crime, they bypass the courts and collapse the presumption of innocence. The bulldozer becomes a language of instant justice, its steel blade speaking louder than due process. This image of punishment without trial cuts to the heart of constitutional democracy.
The rule of law is not an abstraction in the Indian constitutional scheme; it is a promise that power will be exercised only through procedure. Articles 14, 21 and 300A — equality, life and liberty, and property, form a trilogy against arbitrariness. These provisions do not authorise State convenience; they restrain it. To demolish first and justify later is not governance but a betrayal of that restraint.
For decades, India's courts have tried to draw lines that power could not cross. In Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), pavement dwellers taught the Supreme Court that the right to life under Article 21 was meaningless without the right to shelter and livelihood. Eviction without notice, the Court held, was an assault on the very idea of life with dignity. In Chameli Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1996), the Court went further, describing shelter as the space where a person could grow “physically, mentally, intellectually and spiritually.” The right to a home was not charity; it was the constitutional floor of human dignity.
Over time, these moral declarations took procedural form. In Ajay Maken v. Union of India (2019), the Delhi High Court transformed the right to shelter into a set of enforceable duties: written notice, a fair hearing, rehabilitation, and proportionality before any demolition. These steps converted compassion into law. They demanded that the State slow down before it acted. That slowing down , that pause before the State wields power, is what the Supreme Court reaffirmed in In Re: Demolition of Structures (2024). It drew a national red line: at least fifteen days' notice, a personal hearing, a reasoned order, and a cooling-off period for appeal. It warned that bulldozer justice “reminds one of a lawless state of affairs where might was right.” In a civilised society, punishment flows from adjudication, not accusation. The Constitution insists on that pause, because restraint is what separates governance from vengeance.
Chief Justice B.R. Gavai recently called the 2024 “bulldozer judgment” one of the most satisfying cases of his tenure. He said it reaffirmed a simple truth — that India “is governed by the Rule of Law, not by the rule of the bulldozer.” It was a moment of judicial pride, a reminder that constitutional limits still existed. Yet beyond the courtroom, bulldozers continued to move. On 4 October 2025, the Bareilly Development Authority rolled its machines into the Zakhira and Sailani areas of Bareilly, demolishing shops, a marriage hall, and several homes in the aftermath of local violence. Officials claimed these were “illegally constructed,” but the scenes of families standing amid debris reflected how swiftly legality becomes punishment. Days later, in Gurgaon's Sector 12A, over a hundred shanties were razed in an anti-encroachment drive that proceeded even as residents pleaded for time till after Diwali. Both demolitions — one justified as retribution, the other as regulation — reveal how easily the bulldozer has outpaced the law it is meant to obey. The irony is unmistakable: the judgment that reaffirmed the rule of law still struggles to restrain the machinery of its defiance.
Over the past year, bulldozer has become the preferred symbol of retribution across states. In Prayagraj (April 2025), the Supreme Court called a demolition “inhumane and illegal” and ordered ₹ 60 lakh compensation to six victims. In Nagpur (March 2025), a riot-accused family's house was partly razed within days; the Bombay High Court swiftly stayed further action, calling the State's justification “unsustainable.” In Odisha (July 2025), the Orissa High Court condemned a revenue-led demolition as “bulldozer justice,” directed “..₹ 10 lakh compensation, ₹ 2 lakh to be recovered ..” from the tehsildar and issued systemic safeguards. Earlier, in Nuh, Haryana (August 2023), the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed mass demolitions and asked whether the State had turned “a law unto itself,” foreshadowing the Supreme Court's later intervention. These incidents show that accusation alone now triggers demolition, and the bulldozer has become the State's preferred legal instrument.
This gap between judicial assertion and executive obedience exposes an old wound of Indian constitutionalism, the distance between law in books and law in action. Courts speak the language of rights; governments act in the grammar of spectacle. The Supreme Court issues guidelines, but enforcement depends on those very officials who carry out the demolitions. They sign the affidavits, file the reports, and return to the field the next morning with the same machines. Justice, in this cycle, becomes a matter of words — spoken with conviction, obeyed without accountability.
Assam shows how easily this logic seeps into governance. In September 2025, the government approved a new Standard Operating Procedure under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950 authorising District Commissioners to issue expulsion orders after roughly ten days for an accused person to prove citizenship — in some cases followed by removal within twenty-four hours. Referrals to Foreigners' Tribunals are now optional, not automatic. Bulldozers soon followed these labels, flattening settlements before any hearing could occur. A law that once demanded adjudication has been replaced by presumption — legality turned into performance.
These acts unfold in defiance of the Supreme Court's 2024 guidelines and despite the Chief Justice's reminder that India must be governed by the rule of law, not the rule of the bulldozer. Yet, in practice, justice begins only after the rubble. Courts wait for the victim to appear, not to prevent the violation but to mourn it. The constitutional red lines exist, but they are drawn after the house has already fallen. This is the tragedy of our legal order: rights are recognised too late, and accountability ends where action begins. The bulldozer no longer enforces the law, it replaces it. The State acts first and explains later, while the judiciary, despite its words, remains a witness to the ruins it once vowed to prevent.
In March 2025, Parliament itself offered a mirror to the Republic. During a Rajya Sabha session, MP Abdul Wahab asked the External Affairs Minister whether deported Indian citizens had been shackled abroad. The Minister assured the House that India had “strongly registered its concerns” and demanded humane treatment and due process for its nationals overseas. That statement revealed what India still believes about itself — that dignity and procedure are the minimum owed to every human being.
But if we demand those rights abroad, how can we bulldoze them at home? The same Republic that defends due process for its citizens in foreign custody often flattens it for its own poor. The same State that lectures the world on human rights turns its bulldozers on domestic dissenters and minorities. Abdul Wahab's intervention was not about foreign policy; it was about moral consistency. It asked, silently but unmistakably: does the Indian Constitution protect only those who are far away?
The answer lies in our enforcement gap. Courts have spoken in Olga Tellis, Chameli Singh, Ajay Maken, and In Re: Demolition of Structures, yet words have not become discipline. The executive moves with speed; the judiciary moves with sympathy. Between the two, justice arrives only after destruction. The doctrine of continuing mandamus, once used to keep reforms alive through supervision, lies dormant. What is needed is not another eloquent judgment but a constitutional habit of accountability, fast listing, real penalties, public transparency. Without that, every new safeguard becomes a memorial to the last violation.
Chief Justice Gavai was right to remind us that India must be governed by the rule of law, not by the rule of the bulldozer. But the rule of law cannot live in speeches; it must live in the streets where demolitions occur. Until courts treat every unlawful demolition as contempt in real time, not as regret in hindsight — the Constitution will remain an observer, not a shield.
In the end, the bulldozer is not just a machine; it is a question. It asks whether we still believe that restraint is strength, that the law must precede power, that the dignity of one family matters more than the spectacle of control. The Republic's answer will decide not only the fate of its homes but the future of its conscience.
Sahil Hussain Choudhury is a lawyer and holds an LL.M. in Constitutional Law from Jamia Hamdard, HILSR. Sayed Salim Ahmed is a practising advocate at the Gauhati High Court.
Views are personal.