In a February 2025 hearing in the matter of Surendra Prasad vs State of Bihar, the Patna High Court acknowledged DJ trolleys and loudspeakers to be a major source of noise in Patna. After criticising the Bihar State Pollution Control Board (BSPCB) for failing to curb the menace, Justice Rajiv Roy directed the BSPCB to obtain reports from the police about permissions granted to operators of these noise sources and the action taken. In October, the police said they had seized equipment, levied fines, and so on over three months in Patna, Barh, and Fatuha but had taken no action in Masaurhi, a picture Justice Roy called “unbelievable” for suggesting that there were no noise violations there. In the course of these hearings, Justice Roy also summoned police officers and upbraided boilerplate affidavits, among others. The High Court’s August 14 order was a continuation of this escalation, culminating — for now — in Statewide directives on the emission of high-decibel noise. Effectively, the High Court’s actions illustrate how dismal enforcement has become despite the existence of comprehensive laws. Courts have repeatedly said that people have a right under Article 21 to be protected from unlawful noise. Today, with episodic enforcement having become endemic, the Patna High Court becoming a quasi-regulator is, at least as a stopgap measure, creditable.

It is absurd to expect the public to complain about every DJ or horn before the police can respond. The High Court’s directions to the authorities to pursue routine rather than complaints-based enforcement and to have DJs, sound-system operators, and event halls register themselves with the subdivisional authorities are the sort of proactive enforcement that regulating noise pollution in particular warrants. In fact, the High Court’s order also touched on a practical, everyday understanding of how loud-noise violations occur when it directed loudspeakers to stop playing at 9.55 p.m., five minutes before the law’s 10 p.m. cut-off, effectively allowing time for operators to wind up rather than permit the deceptively innocuous practice of carrying on past 10 p.m. because “it is just a few minutes”. Loud noise is often produced by ordinary social events such as festivals, weddings, political campaigns, and religious events, and enforcing rules creates friction with people who believe they have a right to practise their culture as they deem fit. Also, governments have an incentive to tolerate, rather than antagonise, their constituents. At the same time, having operators register themselves so that officials can regulate all of them equally rather than sporadically can also eliminate selective interventions. In the final analysis, the success of the High Court’s latest order should be measured by whether the State develops a consistent habit of enforcement.