Judgment

BOSE J. : This petition and three others, namely Petitions Nos. 147, 155 and 157 of 1952 raise issues regarding the vires and applicability to these cases of section 3 of the Preventive Detention (Amendment) Act, 1952. This judgment is confined to those points and will govern these cases only in so far as they raise those points. The remaining points which do not touch these issues will be dealt with by another Bench. The only exception is a point raised in Petition No. 155 of 1952 with which the other petitions are not concerned. We will deal with that separately.

2. The present petition (No. 86 of 1952) was argued very ably and with commendable conciseness by the petitioner in person. The fact that he has not been able to persuade us to his view is not due to any defect in his presentation of the case.

3. The petitioner was arrested on the 15th of November 1951 and an order of detention under the Preventive Detention Act, 1950, was served on him the same day, and he was given the grounds of detention on the following day the 16th. His case was placed before an Advisory Board and on the 8th of February 1952 the Bombay government "confirmed and continued" the detention under section 11 (1) of the Preventive Detention Act, 1950.

4. This Act, as it originally stood, was due to expire on the 1st of April 1951, but in that year an amending Act was passed which, among other things, prolonged its life to the 1st of April 1952. The order of detention in this case was passed under the Act of 1950 as amended by the Act of 1951. According to past decisions of this Court, the detention would have expired on the 1st of April 1952 when the Act 0f 1950 as amended in 1951 would itself have expired. But a fresh Act was passed in 1952 (Act XXXIV (34) of 1952), the Preventive Detention (Amendment) Act, 1952. The effect of this Act was to prolong the life of the Act of 1950 for a further six months, namely till the 1st of October 1952. The question is whether that Act also prolonged the detention and whether it had the vires to do so.

5. It was contended that the mere prolongation of the life of an Act does not, by reason of that alone, prolong the life of a detention which was due to expire when the Act, under which it was made expired. Therefore, as the Act under which the present detention was made was due to expire on the 1st of April 1952, the mere prolongation of its life by the amending Act did not affect a prolongation of the detention. Accordingly, the petitioner should have been released on the 1st of April 1952, and as there is no fresh order of detention he is entitled to immediate release.

6. We need not express any opinion on that point because there is present in the amending Act something more than a mere prolongation of the life of the old one. There is section 3 which is in these terms:

" Validity and duration of detention in certain cases :

Every detention order confirmed under section 11 of the principal Act and in force immediately before the commencement of this Act shall have effect as if it had been confirmed under the provisions of the principal Act as amended by this Act; and accordingly, where the period of detention is either not specified in such detention order or specified (by whatever form of words) to be for the duration or until the expiry of the principal Act or until the 31st day of March 1952, such detention order shall continue to remain in force for so long as the principal Act is in force, but without prejudice to the power of the appropriate Government to revoke or modify it at any time.

It will be noticed that the concluding part of this section states that the detention order shall remain in force "for so long as the principal Act is in force" Section 2 of the amending Act defines the "principal Act" to mean the Act of 1950. Therefore, it was argued, as the Act of 1950 was due to expire on the 1st of April 1952, the present detention also came to an end on that date and so, in the absence of a fre