JASPAL SINGH Vs. S C TANDON

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for issuance of a writ of habeas corpus calling upon the respondents to produce the petitioner Jaspal Singh forthwith before the court and to set him at liberty. The petitioner has been working as a Lecturer in political science in Khalsa College, Dev Nagar, New Delhi. By the order dated February 24, 1984 passed under Section 3(2) of the Nation Security Act, 1980 (for short, the Act), the petitioner was ordered to be detained. The detention of the petitioner was approved by the Administrator, Union Territory, Delhi, on March 7, 1984. The detention of the petitioner was confirmed on April 16, 1984 on receiving the opinion of the Advisory Board wherein it was opined that there was sufficient cause for detaining the petitioner. The order of detention dated February, 24, 1984 was served on the petitioner on March 2, 1984 and thereafter the grounds of detention as well as the documents were supplied and their transliteration in us Gurmukhi script were served on the petitioner on March 6, 1984.

(2.) The short contention raised by Mr. Hardev Singh, learned counsel for the petitioner, in this petition is that the grounds of detention suffered from the vice of vagueness and irrelevance, in that they could at best be said to relate to law and order and not to the maintenance of public order as required by Section 3(2) of the Act. About ground No. 1 it has been additionally contended that that was a state ground. Before I deal with this contention I would like to state the legal position in the light of which this writ petition has to be to be considered. In the case of Dr. Ramkrishan Bhardwaj v. The State of Delhi and others, it was observed by the Supreme Court that preventive detention is a serious invasion of personal liberty and such meagre safeguards as the Constitution has provided against the improper exercise of the power must be jealously watched and enforced by the Court. In this very case the Supreme Court also went into the question of vagueness of grounds and held as below:A petitioner has the right, under Article 22(5), to be furnished with particulars of the grounds of his detention sufficient to enable him to make a representation which on being considered may give relief to him. This constitutional requirement must be satisfied with respect to each of the grounds communicated to the person detained, subject of course to a claim of privilege under clause (6) of Article 22. Where it has not been done in regard to one of the grounds mentioned in the statement of grounds, the petitioner's detention cannot be held to be in accordance with the procedure established by law within the meaning of Article 21 and he is, therefore, entitled to be released.The Supreme Court again in the case of Shiv Prasad Bhatnakar v. State of Madhya Pradesh and another held as below: Grounds of detention must be pertinent and not irrelevant, proximate and not state, precise and not vague. Irrelevance, stateness and vagueness are vices, any single one of which is sufficient to vitiate a ground of detention. And a single vicious ground is sufficient to vitiate an order of detention.

(3.) I also reproduce below the dictum of the Supreme Court in the case of Kishori Mohan Sera v. State of West Benga: The grounds of detention must have direct relevance to the maintenance of public order. If they have no such relevance they would be extraneous to the purposes of the Act in which case the order of detention will have to be struck down. There must be a plausible nexus between the facts and conclusion drawn from facts, i.e. the grounds on the one hand and the objects to be achieved on the other.