Srinagar: A three-judge bench of the High Court will hear on Monday five separate petitions challenging a government notification that banned 25 books for allegedly promoting secessionism and false narratives.
The bench will be headed by Chief Justice Arun Palli, and include Justices Rajnesh Oswal and Shahzad Azeem.
Petitions had been filed by advocate Shakir Shabir, David Devadas, a senior journalist, CPI(M) MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami and Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak (retd.) and others against the government order that banned the books under Section 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS).
The books were ordered to be forfeited by virtue of an administrative notification on August 5, 2025 claiming that they propagated “false narratives and secessionism in Kashmir”.
The petition filed by Kak and others, also including academic and author Dr Sumantra Bose, Dr. Radha Kumar, a former Government of India interlocutor on J&K, and former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, have invoked Section 99 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023 to set aside the order of forfeiture announced by the government.
“The conspectus of the 25 books pertains largely to the socio-political life of Kashmir and the myriad political struggles interwoven into the cultural history of the valley. These books, most of which are works of academia, serve as records in the discipline of history,” a petition said.
The ban order, as per the plea, contains mere broad statements, without elaborating on how the contents of the books impact national security or honest narratives. The forfeiture order did not detail how the 25 books were identified as secessionist, the petitioners say.
“It is settled law that an administrative or quasi-judicial order having civil consequences must disclose reasons which must form part of the order itself; reasons cannot be supplied at a later stage,” the petition submitted.
It argued that the J&K administration’s failure to identify and incorporate the specific contents of the books, or even to refer to them in passing interim order was a fatal illegality which is not curable at this stage.
“The procedural safeguards envisaged by the BNSS in requiring reasons to be incorporated in the order cannot be short-circuited by administrative verbosity masquerading as reasons… The order merely reproduces the opinion of the State government without elucidating the grounds for forming the opinion, as is mandated by law,” stated the petition
It urged upon the High Court to uphold the academic discipline of history and literature as well as to ensure that the right to know of the people, as part of the freedom of speech and expression, was not trampled upon by administrative overreach.
