Srinagar, June 1 -- The officials said a court had stayed the work. I asked for the order. They showed it to me. I read it. The stay was on a different piece of land. The road wasn't even mentioned.

Still, they refused to build.

This wasn't laziness or corruption, not this time. It was confusion. They just didn't understand the court's language. And this isn't rare.

Across Jammu and Kashmir, government officers routinely misinterpret court orders. Sometimes they misuse legal terms like "sub-judice" to block development work or deny public information. Sometimes they are afraid of contempt charges. Often, they just don't know what the law says or means.

I've seen it firsthand. In Budgam, the survey numbers on the court stay didn't matc...