On 4 February 2026, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Madhu Jain, disposed of Great Legalisation Movement India Trust v. Union of India (W.P.(C) 7608/2019) without doing the one thing the petitioner asked for: it did not decriminalise ganja.

What it did instead is arguably more consequential for how the argument gets settled. The bench held that whether the NDPS Act and its Rules need dilution "falls squarely within the executive and legislative domain," and directed the Union government to run a stakeholder consultation, coordinated by the Narcotics Control Bureau, examining whether cannabis provisions should be relaxed and for what purposes.

That is a narrower outcome than some coverage suggests. This is not a court ordering legalisation, or even ordering a specific policy change. It is a court declining to substitute its own judgment for Parliament's, while putting the question of cannabis policy formally in front of the executive, with the NCB named as convenor.

The deadline claim, and why we are flagging it separately. Several outlets have reported that the government has been given six months, putting a decision due around July 2026. We read the order itself and could not find that deadline stated in it. We are not saying the six-month figure is wrong, secondary reporting sometimes reflects a hearing schedule or a subsequent directive that is not visible in the text we reviewed, but we could not confirm it from the primary document, so we are labelling it unconfirmed rather than repeating it as settled. If a specific deadline order surfaces, we will correct this.

Why this case matters regardless of the deadline. GLM India Trust is the litigation arm of the same organisation, Great Legalisation Movement India, that we link to elsewhere on this site as a credible advocacy group. This is the clearest evidence we have that the argument for reform is now inside a formal government process, via a court order, rather than only being made in public debate. Whatever the NCB's consultation produces, it is now a matter of record that a constitutional court asked for it.

We will follow this story and update it if the consultation produces a public report, a further order, or a confirmed deadline.