The Hindu Editorial Today 12 October 2026

October 12 marks the second death anniversary of Professor G.N. Saibaba, who spent a decade in prison under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), largely in solitary confinement, before being fully acquitted by the Bombay High Court in 2024. His tragic demise shortly after release serves as a stark indictment of an anti-terror legal architecture where process itself operates as punishment.

Constitutional jurist Gautam Bhatia underscores that UAPA has increasingly been deployed to penalize political dissent and criminalize opposition. Cases spanning the Bhima Koregaon commemorations (where Father Stan Swamy died in judicial custody and 14 accused spent years awaiting trial), the 2020 Delhi riots (where scholars like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam remain incarcerated for over six years on nebulous 'intellectual architect' allegations), and journalists like Irfan Mehraj illustrate an institutional pattern of indefinite pre-trial deprivation of liberty.

Former ECI Director General Akshay Rout argues that India's electoral machinery—once hailed as the crown jewel of post-colonial democratic governance and a global model for conducting peaceful, massive-scale adult franchise—faces an unprecedented crisis of faith. Public demonstrations demanding institutional accountability, litigation over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and allegations of arbitrary disenfranchisement indicate that administrative dexterity alone can no longer mask a deepening trust deficit.

While physical booth capturing and muscle power of the 1970s–80s have been eradicated, elections have transitioned into a complex digital battlefield characterized by deepfakes, AI-abetted synthetic narratives, weaponized voter registries, and wholesale defections that subvert representative mandates.

As the Right to Information (RTI) Act marks 21 years of empowering Indian citizens to hold public authorities accountable, an empirical investigation by The Hindu Data Team reveals that its foundational core—Section 4(1)(b)—remains severely undermined by bureaucratic inertia. Section 4 mandates that public authorities must suo motu disclose 16 categories of information, ensuring citizens have minimum resort to formal, adversarial filing procedures.

The annual report of the Central Information Commission (CIC) reveals that out of 2,303 registered Public Authorities (PAs), only 1,446 (62.7%) submitted third-party transparency audit reports. More alarming is that over 50% of the audited bodies scored Grade C or below (less than 80% compliance), with 266 languishing at Grade E (<60%). Furthermore, an assessment of 94 central government departments revealed that only 33 displayed transparency audit reports, while 26 had completely absent or outdated disclosures.