BHARAT DHONDBA TARARE Vs. SUB DIVISIONAL OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Rule, returnable forthwith. Heard finally with consent of the parties.

(2.) This writ petition has been filed challenging the externment order passed by respondent No. 1. The petitioner is resident of village Panchala, tahsil Ramtek, district Nagpur. It is alleged that the petitioner is a man of criminal nature and he has been continuously committing offences from the year 1986 to 2005. A show cause notice was issued to the petitioner and thereafter externment order has been passed externing him from the districts of Nagpur, Bhandara, Wardha and Gadchiroli. The petitioner, therefore, challenges the order of externment.

(3.) I have heard the learned Counsel for the petitioner and the respondents. It was pointed on behalf of the petitioner that even though the alleged activities of the petitioner are restricted to Nagpur district alone, he has been externed from the above four districts. He submitted that, therefore, the order passed by respondent No. 1 suffers from vice of excess. The learned Counsel has relied on a decision of this Court reported in 1988 Mh. L. J. 1034 (Umar Mohamed Malbari Vs. K. P. Gaikwad, Dy. Commissioner of Police and another) wherein the following observations have been made by this Court; .......Where the activities indulged in by the petitioner were restricted within the Taluka of Bhiwandi within the Thane Commissionerate, the order externing the petitioner out of the Raigad and Nasik Districts which has within them the Taluka places at a distance of more than 100 miles is an excessive order and the excessive order had necessarily to be struck down because no greater restraint on personal liberty can be permitted than is reasonable in the circumstances of the case. It cannot be said that the entire order of externment was not liable to be struck down merely because it covered areas which were excessive than what was justified and appropriate areas of externment can be substituted with the areas contemplated in the impugned order of externment. The High Court, when it issues the high prerogative writ of certiorari, it directs the judicial tribunal against which is acting to transmit its record to the Court and if necessary to quash the order which the Tribunal has passed. In issuing the writ, the High Court is not to act as a Court of appeal. It is only concerned with the question as to whether the Tribunal exercising judicial or quasi-judicial function has or has not acted without jurisdiction or whether in the exercise of jurisdiction it has acted in excess of jurisdiction. If it has acted in excess of jurisdiction, then the jurisdiction, then the jurisdiction of the High Court is to quash the order passed in excess of jurisdiction. There the power of the High Court stops. It has no power to go further and to correct an excessive order passed by the Authority concerned.... In view of the law as laid down by the Division Bench of this Court, it is apparent that the order suffers from illegality, and therefore, needs to be quashed.