Critically analyse the role of judicial review in protecting civil society organisations from arbitrary executive action, citing recent examples.

Civil society's right to organise flows from Article 19(1)(c), while its funding is regulated by the executive under the FCRA, 2010 [1]. Judicial review under Articles 32 and 226 is therefore the principal check on arbitrary action against NGOs — effective in confining executive power, but slow and substantively deferential.

How judicial review protects

• Confines power to statutory purpose: the Delhi High Court (September 2026) held that cancellation of CHRI's FCRA registration bars receipt of foreign contribution but does not end the organisation's existence, permitting withdrawal of ₹20 lakh from its own reserve fund [3]. Section 14 powers cover foreign contribution, not domestic money [1].
• Enforces natural justice: CHRI's plea that cancellation was passed without a hearing invokes audi alteram partem, the commonest ground for quashing administrative action [3].
• Calibrated, not adversarial: relief was conditioned on Chartered Accountant authentication — the court balanced survival with accountability [3].

Limits of the judicial check

• Interim and reversible: the Bench only declined to interfere, leaving the Centre free to seek vacation; the validity of the cancellation remains undecided [3].
• Delay defeats the remedy: roughly 20 months separated cancellation (September 2024) from access to the NGO's own funds (May 2026) — salaries and projects do not pause, so process itself becomes punishment [3].
• Deference on substance: in Noel Harper (2022) the Supreme Court upheld the 2020 FCRA amendments, holding that freedom of association carries no right to unregulated foreign funds [4].
• Case-by-case, costly: writ relief aids the litigant, not the sector — and the FCRA Amendment Bill, 2026 would let certificates cease on non-renewal, with no statutory appeal, no pre-decision hearing, and partly foreign-funded assets vesting wholly in a Designated Authority [2].

Judicial review thus disciplines executive excess but cannot substitute for fair procedure at source. Embedding a time-bound statutory appeal, a mandatory pre-decision hearing, and rule-based ring-fencing of domestic accounts would make relief automatic rather than litigated — advancing both regulatory legitimacy and the associational freedom Article 19(1)(c) guarantees.