Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases
included in editionWhat does this mean?
The Article sets arrest safeguards such as information about grounds, access to a lawyer and production before a magistrate, alongside exceptions and separate preventive-detention rules. The applicable clause and current implementing law matter to any individual case.
Enforceable constitutional rights, their limits, protective exceptions and the courts' remedies.
When a person is arrested, the information, lawyer-access and magistrate-production rules need to be checked alongside the stated exceptions.
Why is this provision here?
Loss of liberty needs procedural safeguards. This also creates a separate and qualified framework for preventive detention, which must not be confused with an ordinary criminal trial.
This Article number belongs to the original constitutional framework, but its present wording may include later amendments or substitutions. A provision-specific original Assembly debate has not been verified here. The explanation of function above is editorial inference from the text, not an attributed single motive of the framers. The original draft-making archive is a research resource, not proof of a particular historical reason. The later amendment records linked below document changes affecting this Article; their Bill statements explain those proposals, not necessarily every original clause or the complete present legal outcome.
The explanation of purpose is an editorial reading of the provision. A drafting motive is attributed only where a linked historical source supports it.
Limits, exceptions & reading carefully
Educational summary of the linked source text. Exceptions, provisos, implementing laws and applicable judgments must be read before applying it to a real case.
Read the official constitutional text
Source-page notes · may concern neighbouring Articles
* Cl. (4) shall stand substituted by the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978, s. 3 (date yet to be notified) as— "(4) No law providing for preventive detention shall authorise the detention of a person for a longer period than two months unless an Advisory Board constituted in accordance with the recommendations of the Chief Justice of the appropriate High Court has reported before the expiration of the said period of two months that there is in its opinion sufficient cause for such detention: Provided that an Advisory Board shall consist of a Chairman and not less than two other members, and the Chairman shall be a serving Judge of the appropriate High Court and the other members shall be serving or retired Judges of any High Court : Provided further that nothing in this clause shall authorise the detention of any person beyond the maximum period prescribed by any law made by Parliament under sub-clause (a) of clause (7). (i) in the case of the detention of a person in pursuance of an order of detention made by the Government of India or an officer or authority subordinate to that Government, the High Court for the Union territory of Dehli; (ii) in the case of the detention of a person in pursuance of an order of detention made by the Government of any State (other than a Union territory), the High Court for that State; and (iii) in the case of the detention of a person in pursuance of an order of detention made by the administrator of a Union territory or an officer or authority subordinate to such administrator, such High Court as may be specified by or under any law made by Parliament in this behalf.".
* Sub-clause (a) shall stand omitted by the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978, s. 3(b)(i) (date to be notified). ** Sub-clause (b) shall stand re-lettered as sub-clause (a) by s. 3(b)(ii), ibid. (date to be notified). *** Sub-clause (c) shall stand re-lettered as sub-clause (b) by s. 3(b)(iii), ibid. (date to be notified). **** Sub-clause (a) of clause (4) shall stand substituted as "clause (4)" by s. 3(b)(iii), ibid. (date to be notified).
Extracted from the Legislative Department’s May 2026 edition. Page footnotes may refer to neighbouring provisions; check their markers in the PDF. Inclusion in this edition does not by itself establish commencement or judicial effect.