On June 29, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly passed the West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Bill, 2026, along with the Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Bill, 2026 fundamentally redrawing the boundaries of state power. The administration argues that existing penal frameworks are inadequate to confront the organised syndicates behind illegal sand mining, extortion, and political violence.The administration maintains that witnesses are intimidated, evidence is destroyed, and investigations often face serious obstruction. Yet, a close legal reading of the statutory text raises grave constitutional concerns over executive overreach, the bypassing of due process, and the possible weaponisation of the law against democratic dissent. The measure of a civilised state lies not in the coercive strength of its police force, but in the independence of its courts. That distinction marks the fundamental dividing line between a democracy governed by the rule of law and an authoritarian state governed by executive command.The core controversy does not lie in the state’s stated objective to curb organised crime, but in the statutory architecture chosen to achieve it. For legal practitioners, the first point of scrutiny is always the evidentiary threshold and the precision of statutory definitions. On both counts, the Public Safety Bill raises serious concerns. It adopts an extraordinarily expansive definition of “anti-social activity” and permits an individual to be branded a “goonda” merely on the subjective premise that they are “generally reputed to be desperate and dangerous to the community.”The most serious concerns arise from the operational powers created by the Public Safety Bill. The Bill empowers the state government, acting through senior executive officials such as district magistrates, commissioners of police, or police officers not below the rank of deputy inspector general, to issue orders for the preventive detention of an individual. Section 10(4) of the draft Bill explicitly mandates that “a detained person shall not ordinarily be entitled to be represented by a legal practitioner before the advisory board.”Also read: Bengal’s New ‘Anti-Social Activities’ Law Is Alarming and Erodes Due ProcessThe denial of legal counsel in a preventive detention hearing creates an acute and devastating asymmetry of power. Preventive detention is not ordinary imprisonment following conviction by a court. Its jurisprudence is highly technical, hinging on complex concepts such as the subjective satisfaction of the detaining authority, the proximity and nexus of the alleged acts to public order (as opposed to mere infractions of law and order), and strict procedural compliance with constitutional timelines regarding the communication of grounds.Under the Bill, such detention can extend up to twelve months, even without formal charges being framed or a judicial trial being conducted. In effect, a citizen may be deprived of liberty through an executive order rather than through the ordinary criminal justice process. An unrepresented detainee, who may be uneducated, politically targeted, or unfamiliar with legal standards, is fundamentally ill-equipped to parse these legal nuances, challenge the veracity of the police reports, or cross-examine the state’s dossier.The concern is made sharper by provisions that allow repeated detention if the state considers it necessary after the expiry of the initial term. This creates the possibility of a legal loop in which executive confinement may continue beyond the apparent one-year limit, without the safeguards normally associated with criminal prosecution. The Bill further classifies offences under the proposed law as cognizable and non-bailable. In practical terms, this means that police can arrest without a warrant, and the accused does not have an automatic or immediate right to bail. It also criminalises the act of harbouring, assisting, or providing logistical support to a person against whom detention or externment orders have been issued.In a state like West Bengal, with its long and deeply entrenched history of political violence, fierce partisan clashes, and syndicate-driven local economies, the danger is particularly acute. The line between political mobilisation, civil society activism, and “anti-social activity” can often be made dangerously ambiguous. The Bill empowers district magistrates and police commissioners to detain individuals on the basis of mere “suspicion” or “apprehension” that they may disturb public order. This gives the ruling administration an extraordinary legal instrument. In practice, it could be used to neutralise political opponents, labour organisers, environmental activists, and other voices of dissent.Resembles Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act of 1978History offers a chilling warning against such executive overreach. The opposition has compared the proposed law to the colonial-era Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, better known as the Rowlatt Act. The British colonial administration enacted that draconian law to crush political dissent by bypassing open courts, ordinary procedure, and independent judicial scrutiny. Its oppressive character was captured in the nationalist slogan of “No dalil, no vakil, no appeal” meaning no argument, no lawyer, no appeal. It was the profound, nationwide outrage against these specific provisions that propelled Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Rowlatt Satyagraha. The colonial state’s violent response to protests against this law culminated tragically in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in April 1919, where British troops fired on unarmed civilians protesting the draconian suspension of their civil liberties. More than a century later, the Bill appears to echo that colonial design. The fact that a democratically elected state government in 2026 is utilising a similar legislative architecture engineered by an extractive colonial empire in 1919 highlights a systemic pathology in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s idea of governance.Proponents of the legislation frequently cite existing Union and state laws to justify this expansion of executive power. But a comparative analysis reveals how West Bengal’s new Bills significantly lower the threshold for bypassing the judiciary. Those older measures are, at least in theory, reserved for matters of the highest constitutional gravity, such as national security, terrorism, and the defence of India.The West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Bill imports similar deprivations of liberty into the far broader and more subjective field of localised, economic, and vaguely defined “goonda” activity. Procedurally, it closely resembles the widely criticised Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act of 1978. Experience from Kashmir shows how executive-appointed review boards, operating without the adversarial presence of defence lawyers, can function as echo chambers for police dossiers. Detentions confirmed through such processes are often later struck down when finally subjected to meaningful constitutional scrutiny.Aggressive financial recoveryOperating in tandem with the Public Safety Bill is the West Bengal Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Bill, 2026. This legislation seeks to amend the archaic West Bengal Maintenance of Public Order Act, 1972, fundamentally altering the state’s financial and legal approach to violent protests, communal riots, public commotions, and demonstrations that result in the destruction of public or private property.The core operational objective of the Amendment Bill is the aggressive financial recovery of damages caused during public disorder. To facilitate this, the state government is mandated to establish a specialised Claims Commission. This quasi-judicial body will be responsible for independently assessing the quantum of losses suffered by government agencies, municipal bodies, and private citizens, and determining the precise compensation owed by the perpetrators.Under the proposed law, financial compensation can be recovered not only from those caught destroying property but also from alleged organisers, financiers, instigators, political sponsors, and even individuals accused merely of providing logistical support to the protest or assembly. If the compensation determined by the Claims Commission remains unpaid by these parties, the state is granted draconian recovery powers. The unpaid compensation can be officially classified and recovered as arrears of land revenue.West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari addresses a press conference after the presentation of the first Budget of the BJP government in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, in Kolkata on June 22, 2026. Photo: PTI/Swapan Mahapatra.This specific classification empowers the state administration to attach, seize, and ultimately auction the movable and immovable properties (including family homes, vehicles, and bank accounts) of the accused offenders to realise the state’s dues. West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari emphasised this punitive element, stating, “It is not merely about sending people to jail. We will also confiscate their movable and immovable assets to recover compensation… ensure that those who destroy public property pay for it.”The Suvendu Adhikari government has heavily relied on the argument that the new laws are not novel anomalies, but rather standard administrative adaptations of established frameworks already operating constitutionally across India. Adhikari and other BJP leaders have cited similar models currently in force in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.The passage of these Bills inevitably sets the stage for a fierce and protracted constitutional battle in the appellate courts, likely reaching the Supreme Court of India. The fundamental conflict lies in the tension between the state’s legitimate obligation to maintain public order and the citizen’s fundamental rights guaranteed under Part III of the Indian constitution.The state must indeed be strong. But it must also be restrained in the exercise of that strength. For the greatest source of state power is not its weapons or coercive authority, but its moral legitimacy. That legitimacy flows from the trust of its citizens, and citizens place their trust in the state only when the state itself remains subject to the law. That is why the debate is not merely about a single statute. It is about the very character of Indian democracy, and it is entirely about the rule of law.Sabyasachi Chatterjee is a practicing lawyer in the Supreme Court and the Calcutta high court.