The Same Lawyer, the Same Laws

In February, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta stood before the Supreme Court defending the preventive detention of a climate activist in Ladakh.

He carefully crafted his speech to instigate Gen Z and asked for agitations like in Nepal and Bangladesh and used speeches of Mahatma Gandhi to cover the real intention. — Tushar Mehta

In June, the same Solicitor General stood before the Delhi High Court defending a government ban on the messaging platform Telegram.

We shudder to imagine a situation where there is public unrest. — Tushar Mehta

The two cases had nothing in common on the surface. One involved the detention of Sonam Wangchuk; the other, a platform ban to secure a medical entrance re-exam. What they shared was the legal infrastructure: the same government lawyer, the same national-security statutes, and the same rhetorical frame — "anti-national elements," "Gen Z threat," "B-team of disruptive elements" — casting a political demand as a threat to the nation. Across three domestic crises in 2026, that infrastructure produced the same response, and the pattern is visible only when the crises are lined up side by side. The Wangchuk case established the template. The climate activist was detained under the National Security Act — a preventive-detention statute — for speeches the government said were modeled on "political upheavals in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Arab Spring." ^[1] Mehta offered the court a logic for the detention.

Let us not glorify something which is completely anti-India with the father of the nation. — Tushar Mehta

The Supreme Court pushed back.

You are reading too much into it. — Supreme Court of India

Wangchuk was released after 170 days. The government said it was acting to foster peace and facilitate meaningful dialogue. ^[2] The political track arrived — but only after months of detention and judicial scrutiny. In Jammu and Kashmir, the same statutes appeared in a different context. In July, the government charged textbook publishers under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act — the anti-terror law also used in the Wangchuk case — for schoolbooks that used the phrase "Indian-occupied Kashmir." The charge: "endangering the sovereignty and integrity of India." ^[3] A BJP spokesperson gave the charge a name.

It is deeply regrettable that the Jammu and Kashmir Education Department has distributed this book to schools under the logo of the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan. This is a grave offence. — Sunil

A procurement dispute over textbook language had been routed through a national-security statute designed for terrorist organizations. The NEET crisis brought all three elements — the lawyer, the statutes, the rhetoric — into a single response. When a paper leak forced the cancellation of the country's largest medical entrance exam, the government deployed Section 69A of the Information Technology Act — a surveillance statute — to block Telegram for millions of users, with Mehta defending the ban before the Delhi High Court. ^{[4] [5]} It ran nearly 200 Indian Air Force sorties to transport exam papers. ^[5] Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gave the student protesters a label.

Those who were rejected in democracy have come in disguise and are now after the system. — Dharmendra Pradhan

The Defence Minister, not the Education Minister, offered the government's characterization of the protests.

The Manufactured Sense of Anger by some opposition leaders is merely a failed attempt to confuse and mislead the public, especially our children and youth. — Rajnath Singh

The Supreme Court was blunt about what was missing.

The real problem won't stop till actual accountability is fixed. — Supreme Court of India

The NTA responded with CCTV cameras, 621 district committees, and a transition to computer-based testing in 2027 — a security-grade upgrade that addressed the mechanism of leaking without touching the question of who answers for the institutional failure. ^[6] The government answered a demand for accountability — opposition leaders cited 152 paper leaks over a decade with zero convictions ^[7] — with the full apparatus of national security. The courts, across all three crises, became the institution that drew the line — though not uniformly. The Supreme Court told the government it was reading too much into Wangchuk's speeches. ^[8] It demanded accountability from the NTA. ^[6] The Punjab and Haryana High Court drew a line in July between political speech and national security.

A sloganeering against the Government or wings of governance, in an elected democracy, would not be sufficient to slap charges of sedition against its citizens. — Punjab and Haryana High Court

But the Delhi High Court upheld the Telegram ban as the "least restrictive" option available, giving the government's securitization of digital infrastructure judicial cover. ^[4] The judiciary was not a monolith — the higher the court and the closer the question to the core framing of dissent as threat, the more the government's position met resistance. What the pattern shows is not a strategy but a recurrence. The same Solicitor General, the same statutes, and the same rhetorical frame produced the same response across three crises that shared nothing except the government's refusal to meet an accountability demand on its own terms. The political track — Wangchuk's release to facilitate meaningful dialogue, the inclusion of an education reform bill in the monsoon session's legislative agenda ^[9] — followed the security track, not the reverse. And months after Wangchuk walked free, the same infrastructure was available when the NEET crisis arrived: the same SG in the same courtrooms, the same statutes invoked, the same conflation of a political demand with a national-security threat.