Dear Reader,

The Supreme Court of India delivered over 1,400 judgments in 2025, reflecting both the volume and complexity of its constitutional role. From this expansive body of work, Supreme Court Observer identified ten decisions that stand out for their enduring legal significance and setting of authoritative precedents. Together, these rulings trace a Court grappling with questions of rights, governance, and institutional restraint across fields as varied as arbitration, insolvency, education, environmental regulation, and minority protection.

The story explains how the judgments reshaped institutional accountability, notably the ruling that a Speaker’s decisions under the Tenth Schedule are subject to judicial review, and an advisory opinion clarifying the discretionary powers of Governors and the President. Others recalibrated statutory frameworks by limiting judicial interference in arbitral awards, reinforcing revival under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and striking down flawed tribunal reforms. Equally consequential were rulings reaffirming transgender rights and scrutinising environmental clearances. Taken together, these decisions narrate a year in which the Court sought to preserve constitutional balance amid seeming and evolving legal and democratic challenges.

India manufactures a whopping 250 billion bricks annually, which feeds its ravenous construction industry. Behind these bricks is the labour of around 15 million workers. Most are migrants who work in debt bondage. Bonded labour was officially outlawed in 1976, but forcing people to work without guaranteed payment to pay off purported debts is still rampant across industries—especially at brick kilns. Remuneration is promised in advance but usually disbursed only at the end of a season—if at all. Those who protest working conditions or lack of payment, often with their families, are subjected to violence from kiln owners and forced into hiding.

The Migration Story visits Bagpath in Uttar Pradesh, where former brick workers recount the circumstances that led them to file police complaints and register offences with the district administration. Even this recourse to official channels is slow and limited. Though district officials sent a vehicle to rescue the workers, they were still chased and beaten before they were able to escape. This kind of violence is structural—in 80% of cases of workers rescued from brick kilns, no first information reports (FIRs) are filed, and, since 2016, 63% of rescued workers have not even received interim aid from the state. With the majority of kiln workers illiterate and from oppressed caste groups, knowledge about the law against bonded labour is limited, even as caste-based and gendered abuse, and wage theft are rampant. The reform of the industry is a distant goal.

Forty of Uttar Pradesh’s 75 districts are now affected by dangerous levels of arsenic in groundwater, fuelling a slow-moving public health emergency. With nearly 78 per cent of the state’s population living in rural areas—many without access to filtered, piped water—millions are exposed daily to this carcinogenic toxin through something as routine as drinking water. In parts of Ghazipur district, arsenic levels have reached 1,000 parts per billion (ppb), a hundred times the World Health Organisation’s safe limit of 10 ppb. The plains of the Ganga, Rapti and Ghaghra rivers are particularly vulnerable, placing districts such as Ballia, Barabanki, Faizabad, Gonda, Gorakhpur and Lakhimpur Kheri at severe risk.

The harm is cumulative and enduring. Older residents suffer from bone degeneration, while younger populations develop chronic skin diseases and other long-term ailments. Although arsenic occurs naturally in soil, exposure through drinking water is largely preventable. Contamination is concentrated at depths tapped by handpumps and can be avoided by drawing water from deeper aquifers through borewells. Yet state intervention has been piecemeal. As Janchowk reports, after media attention on one village in Ghazipur, the government drilled borewells but converted only about 20 of its 300 handpumps before abandoning the effort. As official interest faded, residents were left to continue consuming poisoned water, falling ill from diseases that sustained and systematic action could have prevented.

Two years after Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh was hailed as India’s first solar city, the promise of a solar-first transition remains unevenly realised. While the two solar parks outside the city generated nearly ₹10 lakh worth of more power than projected in their first year, much of the supporting infrastructure lies idle. Ground Report finds that more than half of the city’s 120 solar streetlights are non-functional, household solar fans and lamps failed within a week of distribution, and only two of eight waste-collection vehicles in the city operate on battery power.

For residents, the shift has brought few tangible savings. Electricity bills have not fallen, pushing many households to invest independently in rooftop solar systems costing up to ₹2 lakh, often without subsidies. In the surrounding farmlands, power supply remains unreliable, with prolonged outages linked to the state grid, even as solar pumps are still being introduced. Although Sanchi now cuts over 14,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually, its experience highlights a deeper challenge: without reliable infrastructure and inclusive planning, the benefits of a landmark energy transition remain slow and uneven in reaching those it was meant to serve.

For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.

Warmly,

Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF