Supreme Court to examine fresh pleas against six-stanza Vande Mataram rule

The Supreme Court issued notices on fresh challenges to the six-stanza Vande Mataram requirement. The petitions invoke freedom of conscience and India's constitutional secular character.Image used for representational purposes onlyNewdelhi,Oct 27, 2026 14:08 ISTThe Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to examine fresh petitions challenging the law requiring all six stanzas of Vande Mataram to be sung, news agency Press Trust of India reported.A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana issued notices to the Centre and others on petitions filed by Bhimrao Duryodhan Borkar and former IAS officer Balakrishnan Sathyabhama Mavoji. The court linked the petitions with similar pleas and scheduled the hearing for November 30.According to PTI, Borkar argued that the Ministry of Home Affairs' orders dated January 28 and July 9, 2026, illegally replaced a 79-year-old practice of singing a standalone, non-theistic two-stanza poem with the full version, which he claimed contained "explicit anti-Muslim invective"."Under the guise of providing directions on the playing and singing of an 'official version'... the impugned orders repealed the existing National Song... and imposed a new National Song which is the six-stanza civil war song of Anandamath with its unconstitutional idolatrous and Islamophobic content," his petition said. Mavoji contended that installing the six-stanza version as the national anthem was an attempt to convert India into a divine, sectarian and theistic state.On September 22, the Supreme Court had told the Centre that a "conscientious objector" should not be punished for refusing to sing Vande Mataram. It asked the government to keep in mind a 1986 judgment protecting children who declined to sing the national anthem on grounds of conscience, PTI reported. The bench was then hearing a petition filed by Carnatic vocalist T M Krishna, who challenged the law requiring all six stanzas of Vande Mataram to be sung. He argued that the last four verses violated the country's secular character.While seeking the Centre's response, the bench said it expected the principle laid down in the Supreme Court's 1986 judgment in Bijoe Emmanuel versus State of Kerala to govern the amended law. In that case, the court protected schoolchildren who respectfully declined to sing the national anthem on grounds of conscience.The Supreme Court will now hear the fresh challenges along with similar petitions on November 30, with the pleas questioning the requirement to sing all six stanzas and raising concerns over freedom of conscience and the country's secular character.- Ends