Midnight knock on court doors should be a right, not a privilege

On December 31, 2025, six weeks after taking office, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant made a promise. Constitutional courts, he told The Times of India, would function like hospitals with emergency wards. A citizen in a legal emergency, “irrespective of status”, could knock on the court’s doors even at midnight.

An advocate in Delhi read that interview and kept the clipping.

On July 14, she stood before the CJI and asked him to keep his word. That newspaper report was the only document Maheravish Rein filed with her petition. The vision was inspiring. The framework to deliver it, however, is yet to see the light.

The bench issued notice to every high court in the country, on a single question: can a standard operating procedure (SOP) be framed for hearing genuinely urgent matters after the court has shut?

“Give us an SOP,” the CJI said. He would ensure access to justice.

No emergency protocol in place

Maheravish Rein vs Union of India came before a bench of CJI Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana. Rein appeared for herself.

The petitioner's prayers include a permanent mechanism for urgent access and rosters in the high courts. The petition asks for designated duty judges, reachable by electronic filing, for matters arising at night, on weekends and on public holidays.

She told the court about an inter-faith couple who sought police protection at 8 pm one evening in the closing weeks of 2025. They were kept waiting. The young woman was handed to her parents late that night. Rein telephoned judges until three in the morning. She was told to wait until the courts opened. No court sat.

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Her grievance turns on one piece of court vocabulary. To get a case heard in a hurry, a lawyer must mention it. In her filing before the apex court, Rein recounted the cumbersome nature of the whole process. She says to get the case heard sooner, an advocate must reach the court when the bench assembles in the morning and asks for the matter to be taken up early. Before she can do that, the papers must clear the Registry, the court’s filing office, which examines them for defects. Both steps happen in daylight.

A filing made after 6 pm therefore sits until the next morning, Rein told the bench. Her clerk must then stand at the Registry counter and argue that it matters. “I can access the court only during the day,” she said.

Current mechanism not foolproof

Justice Bagchi observed that the mechanisms for urgent hearings already exist, and that the failure here appeared to lie at the “access point”. CJI Kant said scrutiny was needed because urgent petitions arrive vague and incomplete, stuffed with photocopies and screenshots in place of pleadings. He recalled that when the Bar asked for vacation benches, the court constituted five. The same lawyers then sent in adjournment slips.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta added the practical objection. He said degrees of urgency are hard to separate at night. A petition filed at 11 pm about a 9 am listing cannot summon a midnight bench. It was the CJI, not the Union, who then drew the line. Yes, the mechanism could be misused, he said. “This should only be for matters of life and liberty.”

The bench asked the petitioner to take her inputs to the Registry.

Need for urgent hearings

Rein’s petition does not seek another avenue for mentioning cases. It asks the court to hold that Article 21 is not fully enforced by the existence of a remedy. The right must include timely and meaningful access to a constitutional court when liberty faces an imminent threat.

Its prayers include a permanent mechanism for urgent access and rosters in the high courts. It asks for designated duty judges, reachable by electronic filing, for matters arising at night, on weekends and on public holidays.

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The petition also invokes Article 142 for interim guidelines until the competent authorities frame rules. That device is borrowed from Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan, where the court wrote the rule against sexual harassment at workplaces to fill a void in the law.

The petition lists illegal detention, custodial violence, imminent demolition, deportation and emergency censorship. In each, a remedy delivered the following morning may be meaningless. An order restraining a demolition after the home has been razed states the correct principle. It does not restore the home. Executive action is not confined to court hours, and constitutional protection should not depend on when the executive chooses to act.

Technology helps in filings, but not in access

India’s constitutional courts already hold most of the technology an emergency needs. Petitions can be filed electronically. Judges, lawyers and government officers can join a hearing by video. A computer may accept a filing at midnight. That does not mean anyone will read it, judge its urgency and reach a judge before the threatened act occurs.

At present a lawyer seeking an after-hours hearing telephones the Registry, reaches a judge’s staff, or asks a senior counsel to intercede. Such arrangements work in individual cases. Their effectiveness depends on knowledge, persistence and personal networks.

A workable system does not require every courtroom to stay open all night. It requires a court to remain institutionally reachable.

Without a uniform mechanism across the high courts, access to constitutional remedies is unequal. The petition raises that as a question under Article 14. The Constitution cannot promise everyone the same protection while leaving the route to relief dependent on whom the litigant knows.

Justice Bagchi resisted the framing and then conceded the ground beneath it. Access during official hours differs from access beyond them, he said. Graded access to justice, on his formulation, is not a denial of justice. He then noted that courts never really close now that e-filing is live. A letter, an email or a phone call would suffice to activate the system.

Rein agreed the technology has transformed the court’s capacity. None of it has been integrated into a uniform institutional framework for emergencies. The wires are laid. Nobody has written the rule that says when the phone is answered.

Contact, influence matter

On July 30, 2015, hours before Yakub Memon was hanged for the 1993 Mumbai blasts, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Prafulla C Pant and Amitava Roy heard his last plea in Court No. 4. His lawyers had reached then CJI HL Dattu’s residence after midnight. The hearing began at about 3.20 am. It was the first time the court had sat past midnight on its own premises.

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Rein’s petition says she was also awake until three, for a couple nobody had heard of. And Memon’s case is proof that the court, if it wants, can find the hour. But what separates the two nights is who was knocking, and whether that person knew the way to the Chief Justice’s house.

The objection is seldom that the famous cases should not have been heard. It is that the same readiness is not visibly available elsewhere – not to an unknown person detained at night, not to a family facing a demolition squad before sunrise.

Why a published protocol is necessary

A published protocol replaces personalised access with rule-based access.

That shift has consequences for legitimacy. The public judges courts by the correctness of the eventual judgment, and also by whether the process looks open and impartial. An unsuccessful applicant may accept refusal if the request was received, examined within a declared period and rejected for recorded reasons. Silence creates a sharper sense of exclusion.

A workable system does not require every courtroom to stay open all night. It requires a court to remain institutionally reachable. Each high court and the Supreme Court should have a publicised emergency number and digital portal. A rotating duty registrar should receive requests, seek any clarification needed, and decide whether the matter goes before the duty judge.

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The request should state the threatened action, when it is expected, why it cannot await normal hours and the protection needed. A person facing unlawful detention at midnight cannot produce a paginated petition with a list of authorities. The threshold should be factual credibility and irreversibility, not technical perfection. That answers the paperbook complaint without conceding it. The complaint is about the Bar. The petition is about the litigant.

The system should acknowledge receipt at once and issue a reference number. A decision on whether to convene a hearing should follow within a prescribed period.

Duty judges, holding order a must

In an interaction with a reputed publication, CJI Kant said the response, “should come within an hour” of an urgent mention. It is the first time a clock has been attached to access. In the gravest cases, an hour may itself be too long. In others, the matter may properly go to the first bench next morning.

Where a hearing is required, it can be virtual. The duty judge need only consider protection sufficient to hold the position until the regular bench hears the parties. That prevents an emergency channel from becoming a parallel court.

The measure of the reform will not be the number of famous cases heard at midnight. It will be whether someone without money, influence or a recognised lawyer can make the system answer.

The prayer for emergency constitutional benches should not be read literally. A constitution bench has a settled meaning under Article 145(3). It means at least five judges on a substantial question of constitutional interpretation. Most after-hours emergencies need a holding order from a single judge. The right institution is an emergency roster of duty judges.

The legal-aid test

The strongest safeguard against elite capture of the justice system is the integration of legal services authorities into the mechanism. A protocol reachable in practice only through advocates-on-record, English pleadings and digitally sophisticated offices will formalise inequality rather than cure it.

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National, state and district legal services authorities should each keep an on-call panel able to file emergency applications. Prison legal-aid clinics, protection officers, shelter homes and authorised paralegal volunteers should know how to activate it. High courts should publish instructions in regional languages. A relative or a legal-aid representative should be able to make the request when the affected person is in custody.

The measure of the reform will not be the number of famous cases heard at midnight. It will be whether someone without money, influence or a recognised lawyer can make the system answer.

Solution for manufactured urgency

The court’s anxiety about manufactured urgency is justified, and an open door would be abused within a week. Commercial parties will dress financial consequences as constitutional emergencies. Lawyers will delay a filing and then demand an immediate hearing.

The SOP should therefore adopt a graduated test. An after-hours hearing should lie where the harm is imminent, serious and substantially irreversible. Life and personal liberty must remain at the centre. Demolition of an occupied home implicates shelter, dignity and safety. Deportation removes a person beyond the court’s reach. Forced separation of consenting adults exposes them to violence. The label on the case should not obscure the consequence.

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Deliberate falsehood about urgency should attract costs. But sanctions must not be pitched so high that legal-aid lawyers grow reluctant to bring uncertain but grave cases.

A national minimum

Solicitor General Mehta proposed the tidy route. Let the court frame the SOP on its administrative side and keep it off the judicial docket. That would spare everyone the spectacle of 30 lawyers assisting.

The Chief Justice shut that door himself. High courts do not fall within the administrative ambit of the Supreme Court in a federal set-up, he said. He indicated that the petition may therefore have to be heard, and orders passed, on the judicial side.

This is the hinge of the case. The Supreme Court cannot instruct 25 high courts on their listing hours by circular. A national floor for after-hours access must arrive as a judicial order resting on Article 21, or it will not arrive at all. Mehta’s solution was not rejected for being ungenerous. It is unavailable.

Access after dark is at present a favour. It is dispensed on acquaintance, seniority, and the ability to reach a judge’s bungalow before dawn. A written procedure makes it a claim.

Rein had anticipated him. She made no prior representation to the respondents, her petition explains, because no other authority can effectively grant the relief she seeks.

That does not license a uniform national script. High courts exercise independent jurisdiction under Article 226 and differ widely in caseload and capacity. The better course is a national minimum standard settled in consultation with them. Every constitutional court should have an identifiable access point, a duty officer and an emergency roster. Each should have an outer limit for responding, and a record of the decision. The rest they can design themselves.

What changes

The proposed SOP looks like an administrative reform. It is a question about the meaning of a constitutional remedy. A right that can be invoked only after the violation is complete is often little more than a declaration. Nor will it produce many hearings, because genuine midnight emergencies are rare. The daytime queue is the larger problem, and it caught this petition too. Rein verified her affidavit on March 4, 2026. The matter was listed on July 14.

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What changes is the character of the transaction. Access after dark is at present a favour. It is dispensed on acquaintance, seniority, and the ability to reach a judge’s bungalow before dawn. A written procedure makes it a claim. The person at the gate stops being a supplicant and becomes an applicant. Make the route clear, equal and accountable, and the spectacle of the exceptional midnight hearing gives way to something better. An emergency public service, governed by rules rather than influence.

The petitioner had one document with which to prove her case. It was the Chief Justice’s own promise, cut from a newspaper. He has now asked her to help draft the rule that would keep it.