The court upheld the powers of the District Magistrate to extern a person from a particular area/district or districts under section 5 of the Madhya Pradesh Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam, 1990, and found the old cases against the petitioner still relevant for externment.

ORDER : – The petitioner has filed the petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India against the impugned order dated 21-4-2022 (Annexure P/6) passed by the respondent No. 2/Commissioner of Police, Indore Division, Indore, whereby the petitioner has been externed from the Districts of Indore and adjoining districts viz., Dewas, Dhar, Ujjain and Khargone under the provisions of the Madhya Pradesh Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam, 1990 (herein after referred as “the Act”).

2. In brief, the facts of the case are that the petitioner is a resident of Indore to whom a show cause notice was issued by the respondent No. 2/Commissioner of Police, Indore Division, Indore on 16-3-2022, under section 8 of the Madhya Pradesh Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam, 1990 enumerating 10 cases which were registered against him from 2006 to 2021 and also a prohibitory proceedings initiated against him in the year 2022.

3. The petition has been filed on many grounds including that the petition is maintainable despite availability of alternative remedy; the order has been passed beyond the show cause notice, the order is in respect of other districts also only on account of their geographical proximity with Indore, old and stale cases have also been considered.

4. The reply has still not been filed by the State after many opportunity and the counsel for the State has again sought time to file reply. The prayer is denied and the petition is heard finally on the basis of the documents filed on record.

5. Counsel for the respondent, however, has opposed the petition and has submitted that the petition itself if premature on account of availability of the statutory remedy of appeal provided under section 9 of the Act and otherwise also no illegality has been committed by the Commissioner of Police in passing the impugned order.

6. Heard the counsel for the parties and perused the record.

7. So far as the question of availability of remedy of appeal is concerned, this Court is of the considered opinion that the petitioner ought to have approached the appellate authority to ventilate his grievance but taking note of the fact that the ground regarding the exercise of excessive jurisdiction has also been raised, to decide the said issue finally, this Court is passing the order on merits of the case instead of relegating the same to the appellate authority.

8. So far as the ground that the order has been passed beyond the scope of show cause notice is concerned, on perusal of the record, it is found that the show cause notice dated 16-3-2022, under section 5(a)(b) of the Act refers to 10 criminal cases registered against the petitioner and one prohibitory proceedings dated 31-1-2022. The relevant para of the same reads as under : –

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Details of the prior offences registered against the Petitioner as mentioned in the show cause notice are reproduced hereunder : –