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3 min readPatnaMar 13, 2026 07:12 AM IST
Sinha Library in Patna. (Image Credit: Rahul Sharma)
The grand revival plan for Patna’s iconic Sinha Library has been put on the back burner after the Supreme Court earlier this week quashed a law through which the state government acquired the library in 2015.
As part of the revival plan, the government had digitised a large number of books in the library.
On March 10, the Supreme Court struck down the Shrimati Radhika Sinha Institute and Sachchidananda Sinha Library (Requisition & Management) Act, 2015, terming it unconstitutional. This restored the management and administration to the Shrimati Radhika Sinha Institute and Sachchidananda Sinha Library Trust, which had challenged the acquisition of the library by the state government. The trust moved the apex court after the Patna High Court ruled in favour of the state government.
In their order, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta criticised the law, calling it “manifestly arbitrary” and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution. The order noted that the state government failed to communicate allegations of mismanagement or provide reasons for acquisition before passing the Act.
“A measure of such sweeping consequence, including complete divestiture of an institution that has functioned for nearly a century, cannot rest on assumptions that were never put to the very persons sought to be displaced. This itself is a powerful indicator of the arbitrary character of the legislative action,” the order said.
The top court also noted that Section 7 of the Act authorised the state to pay compensation up to a maximum of Rs 1, and said that besides aggravating the arbitrariness, it vested “unguided discretion in the legislature” and reduced compensation to “a nominal and illusory figure”.
The library, founded by Sachchidananda Sinha in 1924, holds significant cultural and historical importance, having been inaugurated by Sir Henry Wheeler, then Governor of Bihar and Orissa. The library was visited by leading freedom movement figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Acharya J B Kripalani and renowned Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinker.
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Anjay Kumar, a senior functionary of Sinha Library, said one of the trustees would soon visit Patna to take over the library. Kumar also said that the state government had carried out the digitisation of rare books in the last five-six years.
A Bihar government official said, “First, legal experts will read the Supreme Court order. We will see if we can still seek a review of the SC order by a bigger Bench. In any case, it is a setback, especially after we had a grand revival plan for the iconic library.” The state government had already digitised over 25,000 documents in the library.
The library has over 3 lakh books, including 50,000 rare volumes. It has complete editions of the newspapers Amrit Bazar Patrika and Harijan, which played a key role in the freedom struggle. It also has handwritten manuscripts in Urdu, Persian, and Sanskrit, as well as British-era legal digests and court records.
The library’s rare books section includes first-edition books signed by national leaders and a Persian translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
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The library was named after Radhika Sinha, the wife of Sachchidananda Sinha — considered one of the most important makers of modern Bihar. He was the provisional president of the Constituent Assembly of India when it met in Delhi for the first time in 1946.
Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008. Expertise He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance. Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. ... Read More
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