Article 22 of the Indian Constitution ensures protection of life and personal liberty by providing protection against arrest and detention in certain cases. However, certain provisions of the article are argued to be the fundamental dangers to the citizens of India.

• The first two clauses of this article, i.e. Article 22(1) and 22(2), provide certain safeguards to an arrested person viz. informing the person about the grounds of arrest, right to be defended by a legal practitioner of one’s choice and producing the arrested person before a magistrate within 24 hours. However, Article 22(3), which is related to preventive detention, provides exceptions to the safeguards mentioned under these two clauses of the article.
• Moreover, under Article 22(6), the authority may not even disclose facts related to grounds of preventive detention if it considers such disclosure against public interest.
• There is also a provision for preventive detention beyond the stipulated three months if a duly constituted Advisory Board, in its opinion, finds sufficient cause for the same. Further, a law passed by the Parliament may also provide for preventive detention beyond the three-month period.

In this context it is also argued that there has been reckless use of the preventive detention law, as evident from the following:

• It has been observed that various governments routinely extend detentions up to one year on the basis of opinion of advisory boards.
• In a large number of cases, detenus have already spent five to eight months in jail before their detention orders are quashed by the high courts. Also, there is a lack of consistency in the approach of the courts towards these detentions.
• There also seems to be an emerging trend of arbitrary detentions. The Supreme Court guidelines in this regard are being circumvented: converting “law and order” offenses into “public order” issues, invoking detentions to counter the accused’s right to bail and taking shelter in the “subjective satisfaction” of the detention law.
• The courts usually avoid imposing any costs on respective governments for abusing the detention laws, despite a large percentage of them being quashed.
• Most of the preventive detention laws have been used against the economically marginalized for years.

The objective of preventive detention is not to punish but restrain a person without trial to prevent public disorder. But it is imperative that the State does not arbitrarily resort to it to deal with all and sundry law and order problems, which could be dealt with by the ordinary law of the land. The power of preventive detention must be confined to very narrow limits and it must fall within the four corners of Article 21 (due process of law) read with Article 22 (safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention).