DRAFT CONSTITUTION 1017
debate and put themselves in the position of not merely critics but adversaries of this article. In fact their extreme love of liberty has gone to such a length that they even told me that it would be much better to withdraw this article itself.
Now, Sir, I am not prepared to accept that advice because I have not the least doubt in my mind that that is not the way of wisdom and therefore I will stick to article 15-A. I quite appreciate that there are certain points which have been made by the various critics which require sympathetic consideration, and I am prepared to bestow such consideration upon the points that have been raised and to suggest to the House certain amendments which I think will remove the criticism which has been made that certain fundamentals have been omitted from the draft article 15-A. In replying to the criticism I propose to separate the general part of the article from the special part which deals with preventive detention; I will take preventive detention separately.
Now turning to clause (1) of article 15-A, I think there were three suggestions made. One is with regard to the words “as soon as may be”. There are amendments suggested by Members that these words should be deleted, and in place of those words “fifteen days” and in some places “seven days” are suggested. In my judgement, these amendments show a complete misunderstanding of what the words “as soon as may be” mean in the context in which they are used. These words are integrally connected with clause (2) and they cannot, in my judgement, be read otherwise than by reference to the provisions contained in clause (2), which definitely say that no man arrested shall be detained in custody for more than 24 hours unless at the end of the 24 hours the police officer who arrests and detains him obtains an authority from the magistrate. That is how the section has to be read. Now it is obvious that if the police officer is required to obtain a judicial authority from a magistrate for the continued arrest of a person after 24 hours, it goes without saying that he shall have at least to inform the magistrate of the charge under which that man has been arrested, which means that “as soon as” cannot extend beyond 24 hours. Therefore all those amendments which suggest fifteen days or seven days are amendments which really curtail the liberty of the individual. Therefore I think those amendments are entirely misplaced and are not wanted.
The second point raised is that while we have given in clause (1) of article 15-A a right to an accused person to consult a legal practitioner of his choice, we have made no provision for permitting him to conduct