Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

were smuggling rice to Meghalaya for earning undue profit ? If there was any particular instance of smuggling of the kind in the mind of the detaining authority, it would have been possible for it to specify the particular instance at least in the grounds.

We think that the fact that the Advisory Board would have to consider the representations of the petitioners where they have also raised the contention that the grounds are vague would not in any way prevent this Court from exercising its jurisdiction under article, 32 of the Constitution. The detenu has a right under article 22(5) of the Constitution to be afforded the earliest opportunity of making a representation against the order of detention. That constitutional right includes within its compass the right to be furnished with adequate particulars of the grounds of the detention order. And, if their constitutional right Is violated, they have every right to come to this Court under article 32 complaining that their detention is bad as violating their fundamental right. As to what the Advisory Board might do in the exercise of its jurisdiction is not the concern of this Court. This Court is only concerned with the question whether any of the grounds communicated to the petitioners was vague which would preclude them from making an effective representation. We do not think that because the representations of the petitioners are pending consideration before the Advisory Board and the Advisory Board would also go into the question of the vagueness of the grounds communicated to them,, this Court should not exercise its jurisdiction under article 32. In other words we cannot agree with the proposition that because the Advisory Board was seized (if the matter when the writ petitions were filed and would also consider the contention of the petitioners in their representations that the ,,- rounds were vague, we should not interfere with the orders of detention on the ,core that one of the grounds communicated to the petitioners was vague. The Attorney General strongly relied on the decision of this Court in Lawrence Joachim Joseph D' Souza v. The State of Bombay(1). There it was held that if the nature of the activity for which detention was ordered was such that no better particulars could be given, the, detention order cannot be struck down as bad, In that case the ground of detention was that with the financial help of the Portuguese Government the petitioner there was carrying on espionage activities with the help of underground workers and that he was also collecting intelligence about security arrangements on the border area and was making the intelligence available to the Portuguese authorities. In answer to the contention that the ground was vague as no particulars were furnished, the Court first referred to the majority decision in Atma Ram Sridhar Vaidya's Case(2) as laying down that the constitutional right of a detenu under article 22(5) consists of two components, namely, the right to be furnished with the grounds of detention and the right to be afforded the earliest opportunity for making representation against the detention which implies the right to be furnished with adequate particulars of the grounds of detention to enable proper representation being made and then said (at p. 391) :-