Summary
CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas has asked Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel to put on hold the Standard Operating Procedures of the state's Anti-Radicalisation Cells until it is confirmed they do not permit profiling based on religion, attire or language.
The SOPs, seen by The Indian Express, reportedly list behavioural indicators including suddenly keeping a beard, wearing a niqab and using Arabic expressions in ordinary conversation as signs of radicalisation, alongside genuinely operational red flags like dual-use chemical purchases and encrypted app use.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has separately criticised the SOPs for branding ordinary religious practice as radicalisation, while Gujarat Police maintains the framework targets conduct, not any specific community.
WHY IN NEWS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
This story matters because the SOPs place two very different kinds of indicators inside one document, purchasing dual-use chemicals or hoarding LPG cylinders sit alongside keeping a beard or reciting Arabic phrases and a police officer executing the SOP in the field has no textual basis to treat them differently. That collapse of lawful religious conduct into the same category as genuine operational red flags is what makes this a constitutional story, not just a political one, ahead of any judicial or legislative review of the ARC framework.
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THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE CELL, IT IS WHAT COUNTS AS EVIDENCE INSIDE IT
Article 25 guarantees every citizen the freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion, subject only to public order, morality and health. What makes the Gujarat Anti-Radicalisation Cell SOPs a genuine constitutional problem is not that they exist, states have a legitimate duty to prevent extremism, but that they list constitutionally protected religious conduct in the same document, under the same category, as genuine security red flags, with no textual line separating the two.
Two Kinds of Indicators, One Undifferentiated List
The reported SOP groups dual-use chemical purchases, encrypted app downloads and cryptocurrency transactions without known income, all conduct with a rational, secular connection to planning harm, alongside keeping a beard, wearing a niqab and using Arabic expressions in ordinary conversation, all conduct that is either religiously mandated or culturally routine for millions of law-abiding citizens.
A field officer executing this SOP has no instruction to weigh these categories differently, which means the document itself, not just its implementation, is where the Article 14 and Article 15 problem originates. Equal protection under Article 14 requires that classifications have a rational nexus to the objective pursued; treating a niqab as evidence of the same kind as an unexplained cryptocurrency transaction fails that nexus test on its face.
Why This Also Undermines the Security Objective
The operational irony is that behavioural profiling of this kind is self-defeating even on security grounds. If beard-growing or mosque attendance triggers monitoring, the SOP effectively criminalises ordinary observance for an entire community, which is precisely the alienation that intelligence agencies elsewhere have identified as a driver of radicalisation, not a defence against it.
A genuinely operational ARC would need indicators that isolate rare, purposeful conduct from routine religious practice, something this SOP's current structure does not do. For the exam, the sharp point is that this is not simply a "security versus liberty" balancing question.
It is a classification question under Article 14: does the SOP's list of indicators bear a rational connection to the actual objective of preventing violence or does it substitute religious visibility for genuine behavioural risk.
On the text as reported, it does the latter.
Quick Facts
Gujarat approved 139 new posts for Anti-Radicalisation Cells across districts. The State Intelligence Bureau issued the SOP communication to police superintendents and commissioners on June 19. The SOPs list behavioural indicators such as keeping a beard, wearing a niqab and using Arabic expressions alongside operational indicators like dual-use chemical purchases and encrypted messaging app use.
John Brittas wrote to the Gujarat CM on July 14 asking for the SOPs to be put on hold. Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees the freedom to profess, practice and propagate religion.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
How the SOP's material and digital indicators, dual-use chemicals, cryptocurrency, encrypted apps, could form a constitutionally sound framework if separated entirely from the religious and cultural markers.
The specific Article 14 classification test, intelligible differentia and rational nexus, applied line by line to the SOP's actual indicator list.
How courts in comparable cases have distinguished lawful profile-based policing from unconstitutional religious profiling and what that precedent suggests for judicial review here.
The operational counter-argument from Gujarat Police and why "not targeting a specific group" is a different claim from "the indicators are neutral on their face."
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