The High Court of Punjab and Haryana is on the verge of venturing into a totally deep constitutional waters. The court has just received a new Public Interest Litigation. This petition goes to the root of the legal basis of the new anti-sacrilege law of the Bhagwant Mann government. This legislation is called the Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act of 2026. The law has generated a lot of controversy ever since its initiation. It is now undergoing a tough legal examination.
The lawyer who filed the challenge is Simranjeet Singh. He is a forty three year old right to information activist, and is based at Jalandhar. Interestingly, he has not employed the services of a lawyer in this fight. He is defending himself and being present in the high court. His petition does not challenge a single or two clauses. It challenges the whole constitutional soundness of the legislation on several levels.
The Legislation came to be as a result of how the Legislation was introduced.
You need to consider the timeline to get a feel of the courtroom struggle at the moment. A special session of the Punjab Assembly was held on April 13. The day was Khalsa Sajna Diwas. In this session, the amendment act passed unanimously through the hands of the lawmakers. The objective mentioned was precise. The state government would have liked to have a zero-tolerance policy towards any desecration or beadbi.
Gulab Chand Kataria, Punjab Governor, officially approved the bill four days later on April 17. The law was officially announced by the state government on April 20.
The fines brought about by this amendment are harsh. In the new system, any person convicted of the offense of committing sacrilege against the Guru Granth Sahib will spend at least seven years in jail. That sentence may be up to twenty years. The fines are between two lakh and ten lakh rupees. The law is even more stringent when there is criminal conspiracy. When one plots a sacrilege with the express purpose of breaking the harmony in the community, the minimum term in prison is ten years. Life imprisonment with a huge fine of up to twenty-five lakh rupees is the maximum penalty.
This Collision With Central Law.
The crux of the legal issue is a procedural error. The petitioner claims that the state government did not pass one required constitutional huddle. The area of criminal law is a part of the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution. This implies that the central government and the state governments are able to legislate on the same. But there is a snag.
Things become complicated when a state enacts a law which infringes on or conflicts with a central law that is already in effect. The petitioner indicated that the new Punjab act establishes criminal punishment, such as life imprisonment, which directly intersects with the central Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Article 254(2) of the Constitution explicitly stipulates the further actions. In case a state law on a concurrent topic is in conflict with a central law, the state law should be accepted by the President of India to be valid in that same state.
The official gazette notifications that were presented to the court by the Punjab government only obtained the consent of the state governor. The petitioner contends that going round the Presidential desk will make the whole legislative process procedurally invalid. In the absence of such a presidential signature, the central law is supreme, and the harsh new penalties of the state are no longer lawful.
Discussion: Secularism and Equality.
The petition next turns to the very fabric of the Constitution. Simranjeet Singh believes that Article 14 is grossly abused by the law. This particular article promotes equality before the law to all citizens.
The petitioner argues that the government of Punjab has developed a very narrow, strict law that is meant to safeguard the saroops of the Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib only. This specialized protection does not apply to other religious scriptures as spelt out in the law. The narrowing down of the argument to the holy book of a single religion pleads that the state has not followed the fundamental constitutional ideology of secularism. It is contended that a secular government is not legally allowed to be partisan. The state should give equal respect as well as equal protection of the law to all religions and their respective scriptures. By designing a special, high penalty deterrent to only one text, there is discrimination against all the other ones.
Does the punishment fit the crime?
The other huge issue of contention in the high court filing is the severity of the punishment. The petitioner made a very strong analogy to make his point. He pointed out that the law provides life imprisonment in a conspiracy of a non-violent crime against religious feelings.
Life imprisonment is of the most heinous crime that is normally considered in the eyes of the law like murder. The petition asserts that there is a fundamental flaw in comparing property damage or an insulting behavior to taking a human life. It characterizes the penalty as disproportional and obviously arbitrary. The argument is that, although protection of religious feelings is a valid concern, the legal reaction would have to be more or less in line with the physical damage that actually occurred.
Freedom of expression has been an issue of concern.
The last significant point that the court was presented with involves free speech. The petitioner expressed alarm over the unbelievably broad interpretation of sacrilege which is lurking in the new act in Section 2(bb).
The law is not limited to criminalizing physical desecration. The language encompasses the acts that are done by means of oral speech, written text or signs, visual image, or computer. The plea cries foul that this broad definition is not of any actual sense. An unclearly defined law of speech can readily be used poorly by the government to kill dissent or even penalize fair criticism. The petitioner was greatly concerned that such a wide net was likely to have an extreme chilling effect on the very freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the Constitution. He claimed that this law could be unfairly enforced at once and cause unjust criminal prosecutions on mere grounds of social media posts or commentary by the masses.
The state government is demanding that the law is a necessary step to maintain social harmony and to avert riots. The government has insisted that they are not out to favor any form of community. Rather, they perceive the legislation as a direct reaction to an increasing number of extremely volatile incidents that endanger the peace within the population in the region.
Simranjeet Singh is another petitioner who has submitted a supplementary application to his petition. This is a supplementary filing requesting the high court to issue an immediate interim stay on the law being enforced. He contended that letting the state apparatus take the act into effect in its current form would also cause inexorable administrative strains. A law that would ultimately be ruled unconstitutional would compel police departments to adjust to the use of mandatory record-keeping policies. More crucially, citizens might face direct criminal charges and even jail time, based on a legally questionable system. The court will shortly start hearing the arguments to find out whether the act is constitutional or not.
