Xi Jinping’s vision for stronger party governanc…

I recently completed the AI, Justice, and the Rule of Law course, developed by the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford in collaboration with UNESCO. The course was designed to equip legal professionals, judges, policymakers, researchers and justice sector practitioners with a comprehensive understanding of how artificial intelligence is transforming legal systems and the administration of justice while safeguarding the rule of law. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a future possibility but an integral part of modern justice systems. A UNESCO survey of judicial operators from 96 countries found that 44% already use AI in their daily work, while only 9% have received formal AI training. AI is already being used in courts across more than one hundred jurisdictions to support legal research, document review, transcription, translation, case management, document summarisation, and drafting assistance. However, AI should not be viewed as a single technology; rather, it should be understood in terms of the specific task it performs within the judicial process. This functional approach is essential because the legal implications of AI depend on where and how it is used. Different categories of AI create different opportunities and risks. Administrative AI is primarily used for case management, transcription, translation, and other routine functions that improve court efficiency. Research and analytical AI assists legal professionals in identifying relevant legislation, precedents, and legal principles. Decision-support AI helps analyse patterns and provide recommendations, while generative AI produces summaries, drafts legal documents, and generates text. Each category presents distinct legal, ethical, and governance challenges, requiring different levels of scrutiny and oversight. A central theme in the course was that AI should support judicial work rather than replace judicial decision-making. Judicial authority must always remain with human judges, who retain ultimate responsibility for interpreting the law and deciding cases. AI can assist by improving efficiency and providing analytical support, but it cannot substitute independent legal reasoning or judicial discretion. The principle of Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) is emphasized, under which meaningful human oversight remains essential whenever AI influences legal processes or outcomes. There are considerable opportunities AI presents for improving justice systems. AI can significantly accelerate legal research, improve case management, automate transcription and translation, summarise lengthy legal documents, and reduce the administrative workload of judges and court staff. By automating repetitive tasks, AI enables judges to devote more time to hearings, legal analysis, and reasoned decision-making. AI has the potential to improve access to justice by making legal services faster, more efficient, and more accessible. Alongside these benefits, there are risks associated with AI in the justice sector. Generative AI may produce hallucinated legal authorities, inaccurate citations, or misleading legal analysis. Algorithmic bias may reinforce existing inequalities, while automation bias can encourage users to place excessive trust in AI-generated outputs without independent verification. Other important concerns include the lack of transparency in ‘black box’ algorithms, risks to privacy and confidentiality, and the possibility that excessive reliance on AI may gradually erode the professional skills and independent judgment of legal practitioners. The responsible adoption of AI requires governance rather than simply introducing new technology. Effective implementation depends upon institutional AI policies, comprehensive risk and human rights impact assessments, pilot testing before deployment, continuous monitoring and evaluation, transparency, explainability, and accountability. The importance of multidisciplinary oversight involving judges, technologists, policymakers, and civil society to ensure that AI systems remain trustworthy and aligned with the principles of justice and the rule of law. Another important aspect of the role of AI is in promoting access to justice. AI-powered legal assistants can help self-represented litigants understand legal procedures, prepare legal documents, translate court materials into different languages, and support mediation and dispute resolution processes. These applications have the potential to make legal information and services more accessible, particularly for individuals who face financial, linguistic, or geographical barriers in accessing justice. However, the ethical and professional responsibility always remains with human legal professionals. Regardless of how sophisticated AI systems become, judges remain accountable for their decisions, and lawyers remain responsible for the accuracy, quality, and integrity of their work. AI cannot replace professional ethics, judicial independence, impartiality, or the duty to provide transparent, reasoned, and legally sound judgments. Overall, AI should be viewed as a powerful judicial support tool rather than a judicial decision-maker. Its responsible use depends upon understanding the function of each AI system, maintaining meaningful human oversight, safeguarding fundamental rights, ensuring transparency and accountability, and adopting strong institutional governance so that technological innovation strengthens, rather than undermines, the rule of law.

By Ali Hiader A certain segment in Pakistan has been gaining momentum in arguing that had dictator General Pervez Musharraf—like Imran Khan—said “Absolutely Not” to Washington, Pakistan might have been spared the scourge of terrorism and the subsequent economic hardships. However, such an argument attempts to view the decision made in 2001 through the lens of circumstances that emerged years later. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shook the United States and sent shockwaves through the global order; approximately 3,000 people lost their lives, and institutions regarded globally as symbols of American economic and military might were targeted. These attacks challenged the security of the world’s sole superpower and generated intense public pressure on the President George W. Bush’s administration to take retaliatory action. For the United States, inaction had become politically almost impossible. Responsibility for these attacks was attributed to Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden—a Saudi national who was living in Afghanistan under Taliban protection. Initially, Bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks, but his later statements increasingly portrayed as a retaliatory response to American policies. Regardless of how these statements were interpreted politically, by the end of 2001, it was clear to Washington that Al-Qaeda was the primary enemy and that Afghanistan was the hub of its operations. This context holds particular significance for Pakistan because the Taliban government was harboring Osama bin Laden. Pakistan was not merely a distant spectator to this crisis; it shared a long border with Afghanistan and had spent two decades during the Cold War establishing an extensive political and intelligence network there. Consequently, the United States had no better option than Pakistan. Therefore, the fundamental question is: Did Pakistan truly have the option to simply say “absolutely not,” instead of joining the American war? Pakistan was already grappling with severe economic and diplomatic vulnerabilities during the post-9/11 crisis, as the United States and other Western nations had imposed harsh economic sanctions following the 1998 nuclear tests. These sanctions slowed the pace of development, hampered foreign investment, and strained relations with global financial institutions, leaving the country already burdened by heavy debt. The situation became further complicated when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in October 1999, overthrowing an elected government. The military coup added fuel to the fire, further damaging Pakistan’s global reputation and leaving the country diplomatically weakened at a time when it needed international support the most. Following the September 11 attacks, Washington made its expectations absolutely clear. According to Musharraf’s own account, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage delivered a stern message to Pakistan: it had to stand either with the United States or against it. Another remark widely attributed to the US position was that if Pakistan refused to cooperate, it could be sent “back to the Stone Age.” Although the exact wording of that phrase was never officially substantiated, the intensity of US pressure was undeniable. Did the United States have the capability to inflict devastating damage on Pakistan, despite Pakistan being a nuclear power? The answer to this is “yes.” Pakistan’s nuclear capability was primarily developed to deter India. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal provided Islamabad with a strategic deterrent against its key regional rival, but this did not mean Pakistan was immune to American economic, diplomatic, or technological pressure. Pakistan lacked the long-range military capabilities to directly strike the U.S. mainland—located 7,000 miles away—whereas the United States held an overwhelming advantage in air power, naval strength, intelligence, technology, financial resources, and global diplomatic influence. Therefore, nuclear weapons were not synonymous with strategic parity with the United States. Pakistan could deter certain types of aggression from India, but realistically, it lacked the capability to inflict the same level of damage upon the United States. Another major reason for Pakistan’s importance to the United States was the intelligence network present in Afghanistan. During the Cold War, Pakistan was one of the United States’ key regional partners in supporting the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation. Pakistani intelligence agencies established extensive networks among Afghan groups, while the United States and Saudi Arabia provided arms and financial support for the resistance. Pakistan served as a crucial conduit for channeling this aid to the Afghan resistance. This historical relationship gave the United States a unique strategic advantage after 9/11. Pakistan possessed a combination of geography, intelligence networks, logistical routes, and institutional experience—assets that would have been extremely difficult to replace. Its cooperation could significantly facilitate U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Consequently, Islamabad chose the path it deemed relatively less damaging. Pakistan provided assistance through logistical support, access to airspace and facilities, intelligence cooperation, and other means, but did not directly join the war; in return for this strategic support, US sanctions were eased, economic aid increased, and Pakistan regained special diplomatic significance in Washington. This does not mean that the decision was without negative consequences. Pakistan itself became a major target of terrorism, resulting in the deaths of nearly 70,000 civilian and military personnels and economic losses of approximately $150 billion; Pakistan paid a very heavy price for this war. Furthermore, the repercussions of the strategic policies adopted during the 1980s and 1990s later manifested as problems for Pakistan—issues that perhaps could not have been fully foreseen in 2001. However, there is an important distinction here: criticizing the consequences of a decision and claiming that a different realistic course of action existed at the time are two separate things. A major irony of the Afghan war is that U.S. officials and analysts have repeatedly cited Pakistan as one of the primary reason for the failure to achieve American objectives in Afghanistan. When the question arises as to why the world’s most powerful military failed to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan, the answer is sometimes given in a single word: Pakistan. This should not necessarily be viewed as a badge of honor; rather, it reflects a complex relationship in which Washington needed Pakistan yet lacked trust in it, while simultaneously accusing certain Pakistani elements of supporting forces that were undermining

The debate over the creation of new administrative units and provinces in Pakistan has once again occupied the national discourse after Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi declared that the country’s existing governance system had “collapsed” and argued that governance must be brought closer to the people through new administrative units. His remarks have revived an issue that has periodically surfaced since independence but has rarely moved beyond political rhetoric. While some interpreted his statement as a call for creating additional provinces, others argued that he was advocating broader administrative restructuring. Regardless of terminology, the debate has exposed the structural weaknesses of Pakistan’s governance architecture and compelled policymakers, constitutional experts and political parties to revisit an important question: can Pakistan continue to be governed effectively under its existing administrative framework, or has demographic growth, urban expansion and governance complexity made institutional restructuring unavoidable?  Pakistan today is home to more than 250 million people, yet it continues to function primarily through four provinces established under historical rather than administrative considerations. At independence in 1947, the population and governance challenges were dramatically different. Since then, urbanisation, economic diversification, internal migration and increasing demands for public services have transformed governance requirements. Provincial capitals often remain geographically and administratively distant from citizens living in peripheral districts. Residents of South Punjab, Hazara, southern Balochistan, merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and interior Sindh frequently complain that decision-making remains concentrated in provincial capitals, resulting in unequal development, delayed service delivery and inadequate representation. Mohsin Naqvi’s argument rests on the proposition that governance has become excessively centralised and that citizens are compelled to travel long distances merely to access basic government services, courts and administrative offices. He further argued that countries with expanding populations have responded by creating additional administrative units rather than maintaining outdated structures. Whether one agrees with his assessment or not, his central observation deserves serious consideration because governance effectiveness is measured not by the size of government but by the accessibility, responsiveness and accountability of institutions.  The debate itself is not new. Successive governments have proposed South Punjab Province, Bahawalpur Province, Hazara Province and even administrative restructuring in Karachi and Balochistan. Parliamentary resolutions regarding South Punjab have previously been adopted, yet constitutional consensus has remained elusive. Political parties have often supported new provinces while in opposition but have shown considerably less enthusiasm after assuming power. Consequently, proposals have become election slogans rather than governance reforms.  Critics of creating new provinces argue that administrative fragmentation alone cannot solve governance failures. They point out that Pakistan’s primary problem is not necessarily the number of provinces but weak institutions, bureaucratic inefficiency, political interference, corruption and inconsistent implementation of laws. According to this perspective, multiplying provinces without institutional reform merely replicates existing inefficiencies across additional administrative boundaries. New provincial governments would require assemblies, governors, chief ministers, secretariats, police structures, judicial infrastructure and enormous recurring financial expenditures. Unless accompanied by governance reforms, decentralisation may simply increase administrative costs without improving public service delivery. Supporters, however, contend that administrative proximity improves governance outcomes. Comparative international experience demonstrates that countries such as India have periodically reorganised states to improve administrative efficiency and political representation. Smaller administrative jurisdictions often enable faster decision-making, improved monitoring, stronger accountability and more equitable distribution of development resources. Citizens generally experience better governance when government institutions are physically and administratively closer to them. These arguments have gained renewed attention following Naqvi’s intervention.  However, the current debate suffers from one significant omission. It largely ignores Pakistan’s weakest democratic institution: local government. Before creating additional provinces, policymakers must honestly evaluate why local governments have repeatedly failed. Pakistan has experimented with local government systems under different constitutional and political arrangements, yet these institutions have rarely been allowed to function independently and consistently. Elected local governments are frequently dissolved, elections are delayed and financial autonomy remains severely restricted. Provincial governments often resist devolving meaningful authority because local governments are perceived as political competitors rather than governance partners. This brings the issue of local body elections to the centre of the discussion. The Constitution envisions democratic decentralisation, yet local government elections have remained irregular across several provinces. In many cases, elected councils complete only partial terms or remain financially dependent upon provincial governments. Consequently, citizens seeking municipal services, sanitation, water supply, local roads, building regulation or community development frequently confront administrative paralysis. A country that struggles to sustain functioning local governments cannot realistically expect that merely creating additional provinces will automatically improve governance. The experience of Pakistan’s devolution reforms provides valuable lessons. The Local Government reforms introduced in the early 2000s attempted to decentralise authority by empowering districts and local councils. Although those reforms had weaknesses and generated political controversy, they demonstrated that bringing government closer to citizens can improve responsiveness when accompanied by fiscal authority, administrative autonomy and institutional accountability. Unfortunately, subsequent governments reversed or weakened many of these arrangements, resulting in repeated cycles of centralisation and decentralisation. Political reactions to Mohsin Naqvi’s proposal reflect Pakistan’s broader constitutional divisions. Some leaders have welcomed discussion on governance reform while supporting greater administrative decentralisation. Others have questioned both the timing and constitutional implications of the proposal, expressing concerns that restructuring provinces without broad political consensus could intensify ethnic, linguistic and regional sensitivities. There are also concerns that debates over provincial boundaries could distract attention from more immediate governance priorities, including economic recovery, inflation, institutional reforms and electoral credibility. The political diversity of these reactions demonstrates that constitutional restructuring cannot succeed through executive statements alone; it requires sustained parliamentary dialogue, provincial participation and national consensus.  The constitutional dimension cannot be overlooked. Creating new provinces requires constitutional amendments and political agreement among federal and provincial stakeholders. Such reforms inevitably involve questions relating to resource distribution, National Finance Commission allocations, Senate representation, civil service restructuring, judicial jurisdictions and provincial assets. Therefore, any attempt to redraw administrative boundaries without extensive consultation risks generating political instability rather than administrative efficiency. The opportunities nevertheless remain significant. Properly designed administrative restructuring could reduce regional disparities, improve public service delivery, enhance

The third part of this series demonstrated that tax policy is never politically neutral. Every exemption, rate differential, withholding provision and collection mechanism determines who will bear the burden, who will receive protection and who will remain outside effective enforcement. The next question is unavoidable. Why do reforms that appear technically sound on paper repeatedly fail in Pakistan? The usual explanation is weak implementation. Successive governments announce that the policy was correct, while administrative capacity, political resistance or taxpayer behaviour prevented its success. This distinction between sound design and deficient execution is comforting because it preserves confidence in the original prescription. It also conceals an important reality: implementation is not external to policy. It is part of policy. A reform designed without considering the incentives of legislators, administrators, affected sectors and enforcement institutions is not technically sound. It is technically incomplete. Pakistan’s fiscal history is filled with such incompleteness. Broad-based taxation is announced, followed by exemptions. Documentation is promised, followed by presumptive and final taxation. Value added taxation is introduced, followed by reduced rates, fixed taxes, special procedures and restrictions on input adjustment. Taxpayer facilitation is proclaimed, followed by additional withholding obligations, automated demands, coercive recovery and delayed refunds. Each deviation is described as temporary. Temporary arrangements acquire permanent beneficiaries and eventually become defining features of the system. The problem cannot be explained simply by lack of expertise. Pakistan has received technical assistance from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other institutions for decades. Numerous committees, commissions and task forces have recommended broadening the base, reducing exemptions, simplifying rates, improving audits, integrating data and strengthening administration. The present IMF programme again calls for base broadening, rationalisation of tax expenditures, digital invoicing, risk-based audits and improved revenue administration. The prescriptions remain familiar because the institutional incentives producing the original distortions remain largely unchanged. Consider value added taxation. A genuine VAT is collected at successive stages of production and distribution, with tax paid on inputs allowed against tax charged on outputs. The mechanism creates a documentary chain because each registered purchaser has an interest in obtaining an invoice. Exemptions, fixed regimes and blocked input credits break that chain. Pakistan has retained the name of sales tax while repeatedly undermining its value added character. Multiple schedules, special rates, exemptions, extra taxes, further taxes, minimum value addition requirements and restrictions on input adjustment have converted a potentially coherent instrument into an intricate system of revenue extraction. The resulting complexity is then blamed upon taxpayers. Pakistan’s “innovation” has been to combine high statutory rates with a fragmented base, extensive concessions and aggressive collection from those already documented. The system punishes formalisation while expecting formalisation to expand voluntarily. The Tax Expenditure Report 2026 estimates revenue forgone during fiscal year 2024–25 through income tax, sales tax and customs concessions at approximately Rs. 2.353 trillion. This figure excludes the larger constitutional controversy created by keeping petroleum products outside the sales tax chain and collecting petroleum levy instead since March 2024. Sales tax concessions accounted for about Rs. 1.274 trillion, income tax concessions for Rs. 579.70 billion and customs concessions for Rs. 499.14 billion. The treatment of petroleum products reveals how implementation can defeat both tax design and constitutional distribution. Sales tax forms part of the divisible pool under Article 160 of the Constitution. Petroleum levy is a non-tax federal receipt outside that pool. Replacing sales tax on petroleum products with an ever-increasing levy therefore does more than alter the method of collection. It changes the distribution of fiscal resources between the Federation and provinces. A measure presented as revenue policy consequently modifies the federal bargain without formally amending the Constitution. Income taxation displays the same institutional pattern. A normal income tax determines taxable income after allowing legitimate expenses and then applies the appropriate rate. Pakistan increasingly taxes transactions, turnover and gross receipts without establishing real income. Withholding taxes, advance taxes, minimum taxes, final taxes and presumptive liabilities were initially justified as responses to weak enforcement. They gradually became substitutes for enforcement. The Revenue Division Year Book 2024–25 confirms the continuing centrality of withholding and advance collection within direct taxes. This model is administratively attractive. Revenue is collected through banks, employers, utility companies, registrars, import authorities and businesses without requiring the tax administration to investigate actual income. It also creates impressive collection figures before returns are filed and liabilities determined. The constitutional cost is rarely measured. Taxpayers become liable because they undertake transactions rather than because they earn taxable income. Private persons become unpaid collection agents. Refunds and adjustments remain blocked or delayed. Documented businesses carry the state’s administrative burden, while powerful informal sectors continue bargaining for concessions. Pakistan has even institutionalised the category of the “non-filer”. Instead of identifying income, making assessments and enforcing payment, the law imposes higher transaction-based rates upon persons whose names do not appear on the Active Taxpayers’ List. Non-compliance is monetised rather than eliminated. This is presented as behavioural taxation: higher deductions will supposedly encourage return filing. The state simultaneously acquires a fiscal interest in retaining non-filers because they yield higher collections. The instrument designed to eliminate a category becomes dependent upon its continued existence. No conventional textbook could have anticipated such an innovation. Retailer taxation provides another illustration. Every government announces that traders will be brought into the tax net. Every scheme begins with declarations of equality and documentation. Political resistance follows, negotiations commence, liability is diluted, and the final arrangement bears little relationship to actual income or turnover. The administration then turns to those who cannot collectively bargain: salaried persons, incorporated businesses, importers, banks, telecom users and consumers of electricity, fuel and essential goods. Agricultural income taxation has travelled a similar path. The Constitution assigns this field to the provinces. Provincial laws exist, returns may be filed and declarations may be recorded. Effective collection, verification and enforcement remain modest in comparison with the sector’s economic and political significance. The failure is not the absence of legal authority. It reflects the distribution of political power within provincial

By Muhammad Imran, Staff Member, SAHSOL-LUMS and Asma Rahmat, Final Year Law Student, SLC Superior University and Wafa Sarfraz, Law Student, SAHSOL-LUMS   Introduction: Article 10 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan enshrines the fundamental constitutional safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention, thereby giving concrete procedural effect to the broader guarantee of personal liberty contained in Article 9. Rather than leaving these protections to ordinary legislation—such as Sections 60, 61, and 81 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C.)—the Constitution elevates them to the status of entrenched fundamental rights. Consequently, these guarantees cannot be diluted or abrogated through ordinary legislative enactments, and any executive action or statutory provision inconsistent with Article 10 is liable to be declared void under Article 8 of the Constitution. Structurally, Article 10 establishes two distinct constitutional regimes. Clauses (1) and (2) prescribe procedural safeguards applicable to ordinary arrests and detention, whereas clauses (3) to (9) regulate the exceptional constitutional framework governing preventive detention. Therefore, the Honorable Mr. Justice Fazal Karim (Late) in his magic book for district judiciary practice, ‘Access to Justice in Pakistan’, described it as a Mini-Criminal Code, and has rightly described it so. Interplay with the Constitutional Scheme of Fundamental Rights: Article 10 does not operate in isolation; rather, it forms an integral part of Pakistan’s constitutional framework for the protection of liberty, dignity, and due process. Read together with Articles 9, 10A, and 14, it establishes a comprehensive constitutional guarantee against arbitrary deprivation of liberty. Article 9 guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or liberty except in accordance with law, while Article 14 protects the inviolability of the dignity of man. Article 10 operationalizes these guarantees by regulating the manner in which the State may lawfully arrest and detain individuals. Consequently, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, and custodial abuse constitute violations not only of Article 10 but also of Articles 9 and 14. The relationship between Article 10 and Article 10A is equally significant. Introduced through the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment, Article 10A constitutionalizes the rights to due process and a fair trial. Jurisprudentially, Article 10 governs the investigative stage by ensuring lawful arrest, prompt notification of the grounds of arrest, immediate access to legal counsel, and judicial supervision within twenty-four hours. Article 10A, by contrast, safeguards the adjudicatory process through guarantees of an impartial tribunal, equality of arms, open justice, and procedural fairness. Together, these provisions establish a continuous constitutional guarantee of due process extending from arrest until the conclusion of criminal proceedings. Constitutional Safeguards under Clauses (1) and (2): Clauses (1) and (2) prescribe the minimum constitutional standards governing every lawful arrest. An arrested person must be informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds of arrest in a manner sufficient to enable an effective challenge to the legality of detention. The Constitution further guarantees an unfettered right to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of one’s own choice, thereby ensuring meaningful legal assistance from the earliest stage of criminal proceedings. Additionally, every arrested person must be produced before the nearest Magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest, excluding the time reasonably required for the journey from the place of arrest to the court. Continued detention beyond this constitutional period is permissible only upon the authority of a Magistrate through a valid judicial remand order. Collectively, these guarantees subject executive power to immediate judicial scrutiny and minimize the risk of arbitrary or prolonged detention. Implied Constitutional Rights under Article 10: Apart from its express guarantees, Article 10 also incorporates several implied constitutional rights arising from constitutional principle, comparative jurisprudence, and judicial interpretation. The obligation to communicate the grounds of arrest necessarily presupposes that lawful and objectively justifiable grounds must exist before an arrest is effected. Accordingly, an arrest cannot lawfully be undertaken on mere suspicion or with reasons manufactured retrospectively. This reflects the common law doctrine of reasonable or probable cause and has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, particularly in Mst. Sughran Bibi v. The State, which held that mere nomination in an FIR does not, by itself, justify immediate arrest. Similarly, the constitutional right to “consult” legal counsel necessarily extends beyond representation during trial. It attaches immediately upon arrest, including during police custody, investigation, and interrogation, thereby ensuring legal assistance at the earliest and most vulnerable stage of the criminal process. Preventive Detention: The Constitutional Exception: Although Article 10 principally governs ordinary arrests, clauses (3) to (9) establish a distinct constitutional framework for preventive detention. Preventive detention differs fundamentally from ordinary criminal detention. It is preventive rather than punitive, aiming to avert threats to national security, public order, or defence rather than punish past conduct. Recognizing the extraordinary nature of such detention, the Constitution subjects it to stringent procedural safeguards. The detaining authority must ordinarily communicate the grounds of detention within fifteen days unless disclosure would be contrary to the public interest. Furthermore, detention extending beyond three months requires approval from an independent Review Board comprising serving or former Judges of the High Court or Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the executive’s “satisfaction” justifying preventive detention is not immune from judicial review. Rather, it must be supported by objective and relevant material establishing a reasonable apprehension of harm. Preventive detention therefore remains subject to constitutional principles of legality, proportionality, and procedural fairness. Constitutional Remedies and Judicial Enforcement: The principal constitutional mechanism for enforcing Article 10 is the jurisdiction of the High Courts under Article 199. The writ of habeas corpus provides an effective constitutional remedy where an individual is unlawfully arrested or detained. If a detainee is not informed of the grounds of arrest, denied access to legal counsel, or detained beyond twenty-four hours without judicial authorization, the High Court may require the production of the detainee and determine the legality of the detention. Upon finding a violation of Article 10, the Court may order immediate release and grant appropriate constitutional relief. Except where expressly suspended during a constitutionally proclaimed emergency under Part X

I have stood on the dry floor of the Aral Sea, and I can tell you that no photograph prepares you for it. It is not a desert in the way the Sahara is a desert, ancient and self-consistent. It is a wound — a seabed still faintly shaped like the water that used to cover it, salt crusted white across the sand, rusting fishing trawlers stranded kilometres from any shore, and children playing in the hulls of boats their grandfathers once sailed to catch sturgeon. It is, without exaggeration, the worst environmental tragedy I have ever witnessed with my own eyes. And I have spent thirty years of my life witnessing tragedies of water, in one direction or the other. The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest inland body of water on Earth, spread across more than 68,000 square kilometres between what is now Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, fed for centuries by the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Soviet planners diverted those rivers at massive scale to irrigate cotton fields, and the sea began to die — slowly at first, then catastrophically. More than ninety percent of it is gone. What remains has splintered into four smaller lakes covering barely 3,500 square kilometres. The fishing economy that once fed the region collapsed entirely. The exposed seabed, laced with agricultural pesticide residue and salt, now rises on the wind as toxic dust that settles on crops and in human lungs hundreds of kilometres away. Villages that once sat on the water’s edge now sit stranded in a dead landscape, and the world, for the most part, has forgotten this happened at all. That forgetting is its own quiet tragedy. I did not come to this subject as a tourist of disaster. I have spent three decades campaigning for the preservation of the Himalayan glacier system, including a sustained, and ultimately unsuccessful, effort to see the Siachen Glacier converted into a demilitarised peace park — a proposal grounded in a simple technical fact: Siachen is melting faster than almost any glacier on Earth, in significant part because of the sustained military presence stationed on its ice. I made the case, repeatedly, that removing that military footprint would slow a specific, measurable source of glacial loss, feeding directly into the Indus watershed that sustains hundreds of millions of people downstream. I did not succeed. The glacier continues to melt. The troops remain. I say this not as a complaint but as an honest accounting: I have given a large share of my working life to glacier preservation, and by the plainest measure — ice mass — I have not stopped the loss. That failure has not left me cynical. It has left me convinced that the scale of the response has to match the scale of the crisis, and that we have consistently chosen the smaller response. I think about this every time I look at the Maldives. It is a nation of low coral islands, its highest natural point barely more than two metres above sea level, and it is not speaking in metaphor when its own government has warned that the country could become uninhabitable, and eventually vanish beneath the waves, within this century if sea-level rise is not slowed. I do not think most people outside the region understand how literally existential that threat is. This is not a country that will lose some coastline. This is a country that could, within the lifetime of children alive today, cease to have any land at all. That is the other half of the water crisis I have spent my life watching, and it is the mirror image of the Aral. Where the Aral Sea disappeared because rivers were mismanaged and diverted without thought for the consequences, the oceans are rising because the atmosphere has absorbed decades of greenhouse gas emissions, and the ice sheets and glaciers that once held the planet’s frozen water in reserve are releasing it. Through most of the twentieth century, global sea levels rose at roughly 1.4 millimetres a year — barely perceptible within a human lifetime. Between 2006 and 2015, that rate had already accelerated to roughly 3.6 millimetres a year, and it continues to climb. A rise measured in inches sounds trivial until you understand what it does: it turns rare storm surges into routine flooding, drowns wetlands that once buffered coastal cities, backs up drainage systems and rivers, and makes what used to be called a hundred-year flood into a fixture of ordinary life. New York and Miami already experience “sunny-day flooding,” where nothing more than an unusually high tide sends seawater into city streets with no storm at all. Shanghai, Bangkok, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Dhaka — cities holding tens of millions of people and trillions of dollars of infrastructure — face the same mechanism at a scale that could displace populations larger than most countries. And the danger does not arrive gently. In July 2025, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula — among the ten strongest ever recorded — sent tsunami warnings racing across the Pacific, triggering evacuations from Russia to Japan to Hawaii to the western coast of the United States. It was, by fortune more than design, a disaster the world mostly escaped. Scientists have been explicit that higher baseline sea levels make the next such event, and the next cyclone, more destructive than the last one would have been at a lower starting point. We are not simply facing more disasters. We are facing the same disasters arriving on a stage that has been quietly raised beneath them. I do not believe these two crises — a vanished inland sea and a rising global ocean — are separate stories. I believe they are the same failure, viewed from opposite ends of the same hydrological system: a civilisation that has never learned to treat the planet’s water as a single, finite, interconnected balance, to be managed with foresight rather than reordered by short-term convenience and corrected only after