Bavdekar, J. :- This is an application under Art. 226 of the Constitution of India by a person, who was originally detained under an order dated 1-4-1948 under the Bombay Public Security Measures Act. It appears that the applicant detenu was arrested in pursuance of the order on 13-2-1950 and detained in the House of Correction at Byculla under the authority of the order. On 26-2-1950 the Preventive Detention Act, 1950, came into force, and there was consequently passed against the applicant an order under that Act detaining him under S. 3 of the Act. Subsequently by an order passed by the Assistant Inspector General of Prisons for the Inspector General of Prisons the applicant was transferred from the House of Correction at Byculla to the Thana Jail, and he was detained there until the applicant made the present application. Under the Preventive Detention Act, 1950, as it stood originally, an order of detention would have remained in force only for a period of one year from the date of the order; but on 22-2-1951 the Preventive Detention Act was amended by an amending Act, and S. 12 of the amending Act provided :

"For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that -

(a) every detention order in force at the commencement of the Preventive Detention (Amendment) Act, 1951, shall continue in force and shall have effect as if it had been made under this Act as amended by the Preventive Detention (Amendment) Act, 1951; and

(b) nothing contained in sub-s. (3) of S. 1, or sub-s. (1) of S. 12 of this Act as originally enacted shall be deemed to affect the validity or duration of any such order."

The effect of this section was to continue the order of detention under which the applicant was detained up to the commencement of the amending Act, provided, of course, the order was a valid order at the date of the commencement. The point of cl. (b) was that merely because S. 12 of the original Act provided a maximum period of detention for one year the order which was continued by virtue of Cl. (a) of S. 12 of the amending Act, was not to be deemed to be invalid as having continued the detention for more than one year. It was the contention of the applicant that the order of detention which was in force at the time of the commencement of the amending Act, was not a valid order, and for that reason as well as for certain other reasons to be detailed below, there is no valid order of detention against the applicant now.

2. The learned Government Pleader, who appears for the State, does not, at any rate seriously dispute the proposition that the order which would be continued by virtue of S. 12 of the amending Act would be a valid order and an invalid order for detention would not be continued because of the provisions of that section. It is quite true that the words which are used in Cl. (a) of S. 12 are "every detention order in force." Now, a detention order may be valid in its inception, but may not be in force at the commencement of the amending Act for various reasons, one such reason being, of course, that the order had expired either because the original order stated that the detention would be for any particular period, or because S. 12 of the old Act directed that there could not be any detention for a period greater than one year. But cl. (a) of S. 12 foresees two requirements before a detention can be said to be continued : not only that the order should be in force in the sense that the period during which it was to continue had not yet expired at the date of the commencement of the amending Act, but also that that order must be a valid order.

3. The first contention of the learned Government Pleader, however, is that prior to the coming into force of the amending Act the applicant had made an application to this Court for release from detention under Art. 226 of the Constitution and that application was dismissed by this Court. The applicant made an application for review of that order, but that application was also dismis