- (1.) D. C. Srivastava, J. These writ peti tions involving common questions of law and fact and arising out of the same incident are being disposed of by common judgment. In petition No. 27916 of 1996 Vinod is the petitioner whereas in other petition No. 27917 of 1996 Rajesh is the petitioner.
(2.) THE briaf facts are that on 15th November, 1995 Case Crime No. 222 of 1995 under Sections 147,148,149 and 302, I. P. C. was registered at police station Panki, Kanpur Nagar in which the two petitioners Vinod and Rajesh besides three others Put-tai, Babui and Ram Autar were named, vide part of Annexure-I. THE two petitioners were in jail. THEy applied for bail. THE authorities inferred that their bail applica tions may be allowed. Order dated 6th April, 1996 under Section 3 (2) of National Security Act was served upon the petitioners in jail on 8th April, 1996, An-nexure-1 to the writ petition. Upon receipt of the order the petitioners moved repre sentations against their detention order to respondents No. 1 and 2 on 25th April, 19% vide copy Annexure-2. It is stated that the representations of tlie petitioners were not decided within one month in accordance with law and the same was delayed by the Advisory Board also. THE representations were rejected by. the U. P. Government by the order dotted 5-6-1996, vide An-nexure-3, which was served on the petitioners on 8-6-1996. THE repre sentations of the petitioners were also rejected by respondent No. 1 in the month of July, 1996 (1- 7- 1996) and the order of rejection was served upon the petitoners on llth July, 1996, vide Annexure-4. It is fur ther stated that the basis of the detention order is only the first information report, which is part of Annexure-1 dated 15th November, 1995 and the contents of this first information report have no nexus with public order and public safety. At the most it may be a case of personal enmity or law and order which is not sufficient for action under preventive detention. It is further stated that individual action does not affect the tempo of life of society, hence it cannot be a ground for disturbance of public order. At the most the allegations in the first infor mation report can be termed as beach of any law and order Problem, but not distur bance of public order or peace. It is further stated that the detention of the petitioners is illegal as the detention order was passed without application of mind. Unreasonable delay between the date of incident and the date of order of detention also renders the detention order bad in law. THEre was no compelling reason for passing the detention order against the petitioners when they were in jail. THE District Magistrate, Kanpur Nagar, failed to report to the State Government forthwith as contemplated under Section 3 (4) of the National Security Act, 1980 and also the provisions of Section 3 (5) have been violated since the State Government has not submitted its report to the Central Government within seven days of the order passed by the State Govern ment. Another attack is that on identical grounds four persons were named in the first information report, namely, Vinod, Rajesh, Babui and Ram Autar and they were served with the detention order and out of them, the representation of Babui, son of Munni Lal was allowed by the Central Government and he was released, but on identical allegations the representations of the petitioners have been illegally rejected. It is further stated that the representations of the petitioners have not been decided within one month of the communication of the order, which is violative of Article 22 (5) of the Constitution of India. It is also averred that the petitioners have not been informed of the consideration of their rep resentations by appropriate authority inde pendent of reference to the Advisory Board, hence the rejection of the representations becomes illegal. In the course of argument it was stressed that Ram Autar one of the co- accused filled Habeas Corpus Writ Peti tion No. 8296 of 1996 which was allowed by this Court on 6th August, 1996 and he was directed to be set at liberty unless wanted in any other case, hence on grounds of parity the petitioners are also entitled to be set at liberty forthwith. Counter-affidavits have been filed by O. P. Singh, Deputy Jailor, District Jail Kanpur, Sri Har Bhajan Singh, District Magistrate, Kanpur Nagar and Nanshi Dhar Pandey, Upper Division Assistant in Con fidential Section-6, U. P. Secretariat, Lucknow. The material facts emerging from the counter- affidavits are that the repre sentation dated 24th April, 1996 of the petitioners was forwarded by the District Magistrate, Kanpur Nagar to the State Government on that day itself which was received by the State Government on 25th April, 1996. This representation was not accompanied by the comments of the Dis trict Magistrate. The State Government placed the aforesaid representation before the advisory Board on 26th April, 1996 and a copy of the representation was also sent to the Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi by the State Government on 26th April, 1996. The comments of the Dis trict Magistrate on the representation were sent to the State Government on 27th April, 1996 which was received on 30th April, 1996. 28th April, 1996 and 29th April, 1996 were public holidays due to Sunday and Idul-Juha. These comments were placed before the Advisory Board on 1st, May, 1996 andonthesamedaya copy of the comments was sent to the Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi. Through telex message dated 27th June, 1996 the Ministry of Home Affairs, new Delhi, intimated the Superin tendent, District Jail Kanpur that the repre sentations of the petitioners were rejected by the Central Government. The State Government rejected the representations on 1st May, 1996 after considering the material on record and the rejection was communicated to the petitioners on 6th May, 1996. The material documents were received by the State Government on 10th April, 1996 and after examining every aspect in detail, the detention order was approved within 12 days by the State Government on 11th April, 1996. There was thus no non-compliance of Section 3 (4) of the Act. The approval of detention was communicated to the petitioners through district authorities by the State Government on 13th April, 1996 and the report to this effect was also sent to the Central Government, the same day and in this way compliance of Sections 3 (4) and 3 (5) of the Act was made. The petitioners were actually detained on 8th April, 1996. The case of the petitioners was referred to the Advisory Board by the State Government on 17th April, 1996 and the Advisory Board heard the petitioners per sonally on 17th May, 1996. The State Government once again examined the en tire material including the report of the Ad visory Board and the detention order was confirmed for 12 months. Rejoinder-affidavits have also been filed by the petitioners.
(3.) WE have heard Sri B. N. Rai, learned Counsel for the petitioners and the learned Addl. Govt. Advocate, Sri A. K. Tripathi. The detention order has been chal lenged on 8 grounds mentioned in the writ petition, out in the course of argument learned Counsel for the petitioners con fined his attack only on three grounds. The first was that because Babui was released by the Central Government and Ram Autar was released under the orders of this Court in Habeas Corpus Writ Petition No. 8296 of 1996 and further because the allegations against the petitioners are the same and all of them are named in the same first informa tion report, they are entitled to be released on the ground of parity.;