1020 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
accused ? I think the accused has the remedy to go to High Court for revision and say that the procedure of the Court is being abused.
Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava : How can a poor person go to the High Court ?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I do not want to close my mind on it. If there is the necessity I think the Drafting Committee may be left to consider this matter at a later stage, whether the introduction of these words are necessary. As at present advised, we think those words are not necessary.
Now I come to the second part of article 15 (3) dealing with preventive detention. My Friend, Mr. Tyagi, has been quite enraged against this part of the article. Well, I think I can forgive my Friend, Mr. Tyagi, on that ground because after all, he is not a lawyer and he does not really know what is happening. He suddenly wakes up, when something which is intelligible to a common mind, crops up without realizing that what crops up and what makes him awake is really merely consequential. But I cannot forgive the layer members of the House for the attitude that they have taken.
What is it that we are doing ? Let me explain to the House what we are doing now. We had before us the three Lists contained in the Seventh Schedule. In the three Lists there were included two entries dealing with preventive detention, one in List I and another in List III. Supposing now, this part of the article dealing with preventive detention was dropped. What would be the effect of it ? The effect of it would be that the Provincial Legislatures as well as the Central Legislature would be at complete liberty to make any kind of law with preventive detention, because if this Constitution does not by a specific article put a limitation upon the exercise of making any law which we have now given both to the Centre and to the Provinces, there would be no liberty left, and Parliament and the Legislatures of the States would be at complete liberty to make any kind of law dealing with preventive detention. Do the lawyer Members of the House want that sort of liberty to be given to the Legislatures of the States and Parliament ? My submission is that if their attitude was as expressed today, that we ought to have no such provision, then what they ought to have done was to have objected to those entries in List I and List III. We are trying to rescue the thing. We have given power to the Legislatures of the State and Parliament to make laws regarding preventive detention. What I am trying to do is to curtail that power and put a limitation upon it. I am not doing worse. You have done worse.