In a sharp reminder that geography matters in law, the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court recently threw out a criminal writ petition aimed at Punjab state authorities—declaring it simply had no business getting involved.
The petition, filed by Thakur Ashwani Singh, challenged notices issued by the Assistant Commissioner of Police in Jalandhar over a business dispute. Singh wanted the J&K High Court to quash those notices. The Court, however, didn’t just say no—it said, “You’ve come to the wrong place entirely.”
Presiding over the matter, Justice Rahul Bharti made it clear: Article 226 of the Constitution isn’t just a flexible tool to challenge authorities from afar. It’s bound by territory. If the people you’re targeting aren’t within the court’s geographical reach, you’d better explain how your case still fits.
Singh’s petition, unfortunately, didn’t even try.
While Singh’s legal team pointed to procedural rules that supposedly freed them from detailing where the cause of action arose, the Court was unimpressed. The rules, it said, don’t override the Constitution. And without any proper explanation of how the Jalandhar police action had anything to do with J&K, the petition simply had no legs to stand on.
In Justice Bharti’s words, the petition read as if Article 226 had to dance to the tune of procedural rules—an approach the Court dismissed out of hand.
Without territorial jurisdiction, the Court said, there was no room to even consider the case on merit. In essence, Singh’s petition was dead on arrival—doomed not because of what it asked for, but because of where it asked it.
And so, with no jurisdiction and no cause laid within its bounds, the J&K High Court shut the door on the matter.