Sir, I do not propose at all to go through all the details which have already been placed before the House by my honourable Friends, Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava and Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand and several other speakers. The whole dispute as to whether it should be “due process of law” or “the procedure established by law”, and the history of it all has been discussed. The only short point upon which I wish to address the House today is in support of the amendment brought forward by my honourable Friend, Dr. Bakhshi Tek Chand, in regard to informing the detenu, the person arrested, of the grounds on which he has been arrested. This is really the minimum that can be done and should be done. It has been hinted that the Honourable Dr. Ambedkar was inclined to accept the amendment but that he was overborne by “extraneous forces.” It has even been suggested that Dr. Ambedkar has appeared in this House in double personality,–the one Dr. Ambedkar, plain and simple as he is intensely in sympathy with the individual as regards rights and liberties and the other somewhat like the ghost of himself, as it were, like the perturbed spirit in Hamlet hovering about and over his innate love of freedom and yet being overborne by other forces. I do not believe it, Sir. I do not believe that he is capable of it or that the Drafting Committee is capable of it. Let us not regard the Drafting Committee or those who are in charge of these articles before they are finally shaped as if they were an Opposition or as if we were in opposition to them. The simple question is this: Whether the modicum that should be allowed to the citizen has been allowed or not. I do believe that when a man has been detained, it is unquestionably his right to know the grounds upon which he has been arrested and detained. This is the minimum that can be done. The Board has already been provided for in the article constituted of judges of the High Court, or those who have been judges of the High Court or those who are qualified to be judges of the High Court. Such a Board is to go into the question as to whether or not the grounds are sufficient or not; and the whole affair as to whether three months should be the limit or whether the period could be enhanced or enlarged is to be in the hands of the Board. If that be so, it is the simplest thing in the world for the Board to know what the grounds of arrest are.
