Term ‘State’ includes UT: HC

Srinagar, July 9: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh Tuesday held that the term ‘State’ includes the government of each state, its legislature as well as Union Territories.

“The term State includes the government of each state, which is the state executive and legislature of each state that is the state legislatures. It is pertinent to mention that it includes Union Territories as well,” a division bench of Chief Justice N Kotiswar Singh and Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi said dismissing an appeal against its single judge’s verdict that had upheld the detention of a man from Kulgam under the Public Safety Act (PSA).

The bench noted the same after it pointed out that “there is no doubt that the definition of State as contained in [Section 3 (58) of General Clauses Act, 1897] includes Union Territory.

“The term all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India comprises States and Union Territories,” it said.

The counsel for the appellant had cited a judgment delivered by the Court’s Single Bench in a case titled Arif Aijaz Shahri versus the UT of J&K and others to demonstrate that there had been non-application of mind on the part of the detaining authority insofar as the alleged activities of the detainee had been reflected to be prejudicial to the security of the State and not the J&K UT.

The counsel submitted that after the application of J&K Re-Organisation Act of 2019, J&K no longer remained a State but was converted into two Union Territories, therefore, the detaining authority ought to have applied its mind and detained the detainee for the acts prejudicial to the security of the J&K UT.

The single bench of the court had held that a person could no longer be put in preventive detention under the PSA by citing acts prejudicial to the security of the “State” of J&K as J&K has been “Union Territory” since 2019.

“We don’t subscribe to the view taken by the learned single bench in the case and we, accordingly, held that the Judgment rendered by the Single Bench is not applicable to the instant case,” the division bench said.

Before the single bench, the petitioner had challenged the detention of his son ordered by the District Magistrate, Kulgam, under PSA in terms of his detention order dated June 25, 2022.

“From the above discussion coupled with the law as taken note of hereinbefore, this court is of the view that the grounds of detention formulated by the detaining authority and the record supplied by the respondents (authorities) does not suffer from and legal infirmity,” the court said and dismissed the appeal. “The detention order appears to be on sound logic for the reason that the detaining authority, before passing the order, has applied its mind to draw subjective satisfaction to order preventive detention of the detainee by curtailing his liberty.”