P. A. CHOUDHARY, J.

( 1 ) ORDER :- This is a writ petition of the genre of public interest litigation. While studying Criminology as part of his third year B. L. degree Course, the petitioner one day on 16th February, 1985 visited the Central Jail at Visakhapatnam. There he noticed the conditions of prisoners in the matter of their working for the prison authorities without getting almost any payment in return. He found the prison authorities extracting work from the prisoners undergoing rigorous imprisonment without paying wages at all or paying nominal wages. He concluded that the prisoners convicted of rigorous imprisonment are thus being exploited and are being subjected to forced labour. Moved by his humane heart which was grieved by the conditions of the prisoners, he filed this writ petition seeking relief of an appropriate writ from this Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution compelling authorities to pay prisoners wages for their work.

( 2 ) I commend the public spirit and endeavour of the petitioner who has not yet ceased to weep over others sorrows and sufferings. The glow of his early thought did not decline in feeling s dull decay. His efforts in the interests of those locked up behind the high and not easily accessible walls and almost forgotten and uncared minority of our society is praiseworthy. I, therefore, entertain this writ petition overruling the traditional objection raised by the Advocate General to the maintainability of this writ petition on the round that the petitioner is not an aggrieved person and, therefore, has no locus standi to maintain this Writ Petition. I add to say that in public law unlike in private law many more are welcomed and accepted as aggrieved persons.

( 3 ) THE petitioner s case is that extraction of work by the State from the prisoners convicted of rigorous imprisonment without paying for such work is contrary to the mandate of Art. 23 of the Constitution of India which has forbidden the practice of forced labour in our Republic. The petitioner argues that even those prisoners convicted to hard labour are entitled to be paid for the work done by them one extracted from them. He says non-payment to rigorous convicts amounts to State violating Art. 23 of the Constitution. It needs no elaborate argument to show that the State cannot act contrary to or in violation of fundamental rights which are in essence so many limitations on the exercise of State power. It is an established position of the Constitution that State powers are a collection of legal powers and they cannot be exercised contrary to the Constitution. It is equally accepted that the prisoners too are entitled to the enjoyment of such of those fundamental rights enumerated in Part III of our Constitution provided the enjoyment of those rights is not inconsistent with their legal and physical condition of imprisonment to which they have been reduced by reason of their conviction. A prisoner may not enjoy, for example, the right to move throughout the territory of India but he may practice his religion while being a prisoner. The well known judgement of the Supreme Court in State of Maharashtra v. Prabhakar Panduranga AIR 1966 SC 424 upheld the right of a prisoner to send his manuscript of a scientific book out of the jail for publication. That judgement is based on facts that firstly there is no law prohibiting a prisoner from publishing a book. Secondly nor such an activity is inconsistent with his detention. Payment of wages to a rigorous imprisoned convict is not forbidden either directly or indirectly by any law. Nor such payment is inconsistent with the legal condition of the convicted prisoner. Both can co-exist. But the question is whether Art. 23 of the Constitution can form the basis for the assertion that a prisoner has a right to be paid wages. (The word wages is used not in scientific sense but in its common sense.) I find the answer to that question in the negative. Art. 23 of the Constitution forbids t

Click Here to Read the rest of this document