Two former DGPs – Prakash Singh and NK Singh - along with Common Cause, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India in 1996. The PIL was intended to address urgent police reforms required across States and Union Territories. After a detailed hearing, the Supreme Court on September 22, 2006 delivered 7 landmark directives in the judgment. To date, Prakash Singh v. Union of India stands as the cornerstone judgment in police reforms.

The 7 orders dealt with:

- Constituting a State Security Commission (SSC) recommended by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC);

- Selecting the Director General of Police (DGP) of the State from amongst 3 senior-most officers of the department empanelled for promotion to that rank by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and providing him a minimum tenure of at least 2 years irrespective of his date of superannuation;

- Prescribing a minimum of 2-year tenure to police officers;

- Separation of police investigation from law and order;

- Setting up a Police Establishment Board (PEB);

- Constituting police complaints authorities (PCAs) at the State level and

- Setting up a national security commission at the Union level.

States and UTs have only been partially compliant with the orders of the 2006 judgment. The same has been noted by the expert committee headed by the Justice KT Thomas appointed by the Supreme Court itself. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) has conducted several studies to see the compliance of the executives in how far these orders were fulfilled. The studies show not much contrast to the findings of KT Thomas's committee report. CHRI's report also shows that the Supreme Court judgments are diluted, not fully complied with and subject to selective compliance.

Even 20 years since this landmark judgment, the situation remains the same. Executive inertia has created a situation of right without remedy.

This executive inertia has created a phenomenon in which the apex court has to deliver interlocutory orders to prevent the executive's actions that violate those orders. Even today, the contempt petitions are still pending, thereby flooding the apex court with backlog.

The law says that if there is no statute or rule or government order, Supreme Court orders are the law until a specific statute comes into force. Article 142(1) of the Indian Constitution says that Supreme Court orders are the law of the land. Thus, the mandatory directives of the Prakash Singh judgment is law to be followed by the authorities. Non-compliance or violation of the order is a violation of the law.

Continuing mandamus refers to the process by which a constitutional court, instead of delivering a conclusive verdict, keeps the litigation ongoing, giving orders from time to time and monitoring compliance through regular hearings. Even though the governments' non-compliance goes unchecked, the stark violation of orders has been prevented by the courts through interlocutory orders invoking the continuing mandamus doctrine. There have been more than 10 formal contempt petitions filed and 150 interlocutory applications since 2007 are reported, with proceedings pending.

States resisting full implementation have offered 3 recurring justifications. Any serious argument for contempt must engage with them rather than dismiss them.

The first is federalism: policing falls under Entry 2 of the State List and States argue that the Union and, by extension, the courts, cannot impose a uniform structural model on a subject the Constitution reserves to them. This objection has real constitutional weight, but it misreads the basis of the Prakash Singh directives. The Court did not legislate on policing; it issued directions under Articles 32, 142(1) and 144 to fill a vacuum left by State and Central legislatures for over two decades following the National Police Commission's recommendations. The directives were explicitly framed as operative only until proper legislation was enacted. A stop-gap judicial direction filling an acknowledged legislative gap is not the same as a permanent override of the State's legislative competence.

The second is genuine resource constraint. Some States point to the fiscal and administrative burden of restructuring cadre management, creating new oversight bodies and separating investigation from law-and-order functions. This defence carries more weight in principle than the federalism objection and courts have accepted it where states demonstrate real, documented effort. The Supreme Court has consistently rejected this defence from Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardhichand (1980) to Swaraj Abhiyan v. Union of India (2016), where it held that fiscal constraints cannot be a “smokescreen” for a State's non-compliance with its legal obligations.

The third is phased or staggered compliance, which some States have proposed as a middle path. This is, in principle, the most reasonable of the three defences and the Court itself has shown willingness to accept compliance roadmaps in other contexts. The problem in practice is that “phased compliance” has too often meant compliance with no phase ever concluding. SSCs constituted without the powers the judgment required, PCAs established but left without staff or funding. A phased timeline is only a legitimate defence if it is time-bound and enforced; an open-ended phase is functionally indistinguishable from non-compliance.

None of these defences is frivolous. But none of them, on the record here, explains two decades of unfinished implementation. That is precisely why the “wilful disobedience” argument in the section that follows rests on the persistence and pattern of non-compliance, not merely its existence.

There are 2 types of contempt: civil and criminal. As per Section 2(a) of The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, civil contempt is the contempt which is born out of “wilful disobedience” of a court order. Whereas under Section 2(b), criminal contempt refers to publishing or doing acts that are scandalising, prejudicial, or interfering with and obstructing the administration of justice.

The author tries to argue that the inaction of the executives and the non-compliance with the Supreme Court order have the potential to be charged with civil contempt. The current gaps in the legal system, which hinder the court from initiating civil contempt, are two:

a. Wilful disobedience and partial fulfillment:

The executives have always tried to make the defense of partial compliance and seek impunity from civil contempt. The prolonged delay in the fulfilment of the orders of the court, selective compliance with the judgment and the repeated interpretations and clarifications by the apex court that lack of resources is not a valid claim to not comply with the orders of the court (especially in environmental cases) support this. Hence, the proposition put forward is that the continuing judgment shall call this inertia and inactivity of the executive as wilful disobedience and a civil contempt.

b. Against whom the contempt can be charged:

In the case of Prakash Singh, the respondents are all the state Chief Secretaries and the Union Home Affairs Chief Secretary. But the courts seldom issue contempt proceedings against the executive. No fixed responsibility is directed towards the State or the individual who shall be responsible if civil contempt is proved.

The same issue has been addressed in ET Sunup v. CANSS Employees Assn., where the Court held that “it has become a tendency with the government officers to somehow or the other circumvent the orders of court and try to take recourse to one justification or other.” The Anil Ratan Sarkar case has clarified that if there is a prima facie lethargy or absence of motivation, the same should be used to hold them liable.

Non-compliance ripens into civil contempt not merely because two decades have passed, but at a more precise, measurable point: once the Supreme Court has expressly rejected a State's resource constraint or phased compliance defence and the State persists in non-implementation without committing to a fixed compliance timeline. Measured against that standard, several States' conduct are treated at length above and meets the threshold, not merely brushes against it.

20 years of monitoring committees, interlocutory orders and unenforced directives is not evidence that the remedy has failed, but it is evident that the remedy has not been tried. 3 concrete steps would change that.

First, the Court should direct a time-bound show-cause mechanism: every non-compliant State should be required to file a compliance affidavit within a fixed period, specifying either full implementation or a reasoned, time-bound roadmap, failing which contempt proceedings follow automatically.

Second, liability should attach personally, not just institutionally but to the named Chief Secretary or Home Secretary in office at the time of default, following the precedent set in cases like Maninderjit Singh Bitta v. Union of India, where personal fines and salary-linked recovery were imposed on defaulting officers.

Third, the monitoring role once played by the Thomas Committee should be revived as a standing structural injunction, with periodic compliance audits reported directly to the Court, rather than relegated to occasional interlocutory hearings. Continuing mandamus was designed to keep this case alive until compliance was achieved not to keep it alive indefinitely as a substitute for compliance.

Fahas Abdulla is a 4th year law student at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.