Top Highlights

• preventive detention laws are an 'exceptional measure reserved for tackling emergent situations' and must not be used as a tool for enforcing 'law and order'.
• at the ‘drop of a hat’ without consideration of the liberty and freedom guaranteed to people under the Constitution of India.
• distinguished between “law and order” and maintenance of “public order”.
• The Apex Court clarified that for an act to qualify as a disturbance to ‘public order’, for the provisions of the Preventive Detention Act to apply, the activity must impact the general public and evoke feelings of fear, panic, or insecurity.
• “We are also constrained to observe that preventive detention laws—an exceptional measure reserved for tackling emergent situations—ought not to have been invoked in this case as a tool for enforcement of “law and order”.

Domain