G.S. Patel, J.

1. Rule, returnable forthwith. Mr. Saste, Learned AGP, waives service on behalf of the Respondents. By consent, taken up for hearing and final disposal.

2. The Petitioner in Writ Petition No.399 of 2013 is the first of the four Petitioners in Writ Petition 459 of 2013. The facts are common to both petitions, as are the orders under challenge; hence, both Petitions were heard together and are disposed of by this common judgment.

3. These Petitions are directed against the Appellate Order dated 30th November 2012 passed by the Secretary–Special, Home Department, Government of Maharashtra (the 3rd Respondent in Writ Petition No.459 of 2012) in Appeal No. EXT-2012/110/SPL-3(B). That appellate order confirms an Externment Order No. 22-LCB/Externment/276/2012 dated 6th February 2012 passed by the Superintendent of Police, Kolhapur (the 1st Respondent in Writ Petition 399 of 2013 and the 2nd Respondent in Writ Petition 459 of 2013), by which the Petitioners in both matters were ordered to be externed from Kolhapur District for two years.

4. On the basis of a previous externment petition from the Police Officer of the Jaysingpur Division and an enquiry report from the Sub Divisional Police Officer of the Shahuwadi Sub-Division, the Superintendent of Police, Kolhapur Division issued a notice dated 1st June 2011 to the Petitioners calling on them to show cause why they should not be ordered to be externed from the Kolhapur District. The Petitioners replied to this notice and were heard. In respect of the Petitioner in Writ Petition 399 of 2012, there seems also to have been a second show cause notice, dated 11 November 2011, a matter of some consequence to the Petitioners’ submissions before us. The Superintendent of Police, Kolhapur, passed an order dated 6th February 2012, ordering the externment of the Petitioners from the Kolhapur District for two years. There followed, at least in the matter of the first of the two Petitions at hand, some intervening litigation in the writ courts. These litigations are not immediately relevant, for they resulted in orders directing that statutory appeals be filed and heard within a court-mandated period. Ultimately, the Petitioners filed an appeal before the Secretary-Special, Home Department, Government of Maharashtra (the Appellate Authority), who, on 30th November 2012, passed the impugned appellate order confirming the order of externment.

5. Mr. Kotwal, Learned Counsel for the Petitioners, canvassed several grounds of challenge before us. The impugned appellate order and the externment order are both, he says, based on extraneous considerations: the externment order refers to the alleged misconduct of the 1st Petitioner in WP 459/2013 (the Petitioner in WP 399/2013), Rajvardan Babaso Patil (“Patil”), said to be a gang-leader, and a warning issued to him by the police for his wayward behaviour; all matters absent in the show cause notice. The externment order also alleges that the Patil has been enticing and drawing youth to his gang, a matter wholly outside the purview of Section 55 of the Bombay Police Act, 1951 under which the externment order is passed. A number of alleged offences and criminal cases are bundled into the same show cause notices issued to more than one externee and it is, therefore, not possible to segregate with the required exactitude who stands accused of having done what in concert with whom as part of a gang or body of persons, apart from the fact that in some of the cited criminal cases, the noticees have been acquitted while others are being compromised. There were in fact two show cause notices issued to Patil as the alleged gang-leader, one dated 1st June 2011 and the second of 11 November 2011; it is, at this stage, in his submission, not possible to tell which of these, if either, has been subsumed into the subsequent orders or whether one of them is still outstanding. There is, he next submits, a mention in the externment order of the evid