The petitioner held a passport issued to her under the Passports Act, 1967. The petitioner received a letter dated July 2, 1977 from the Regional Passport Officer, Delhi intimating to her that it had been decided by the Government of India to impound her passport under Section 10(3)(c) of the Act in public interest and requiring her to surrender the passport within seven days from the date of receipt\u00a0 of the letter.<\/p>\n
The petitioner immediately addressed a letter to the Regional Passport Officer requesting him to furnish a copy of the statement of reasons for making the order as provided\u00a0 in Section 10(5)\u00a0 to which a reply was sent by the Government\u00a0 of India, Ministry of External Affairs on July 6, 1977 stating inter alia <\/em>that the Government has decided \u201cin the interest of the general public\u201d not to furnish her\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a copy of the statement of reasons for the making of the order.<\/p>\n The petitioner thereupon filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the action of the Government in impounding her passport and declining to give reasons for doing so.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Whether Section 10(3)(c), insofar as it empowers the Passport Authority to impound a passport \u201cin the interests of the general public\u201d was violative of the equality clause contained in Article 14 of the Constitution.<\/p>\n Whether an order impounding a passport could not be made by the Passport Authority without giving an opportunity to the holder of the passport to be heard\u00a0 in defence and, in the alternative, if the Section were read in such a manner as\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to exclude the right of hearing, the section would be infected with the vice of arbitrariness and it would be void as offending Article 14.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The doctrine of natural justice consists principally of two rules, namely, nemo debet esse judex in propria causa <\/em>: no one shall be a judge in his own cause,<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n and audi alteram partem <\/em>: no decision shall be given against a party without affording him a reasonable hearing. The audi alteram partem <\/em>rule is intended to inject justice into the law and it cannot be applied to defeat the ends of justice,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 or to make the law \u201clifeless, absurd, stultifying, self-defeating or plainly contrary\u00a0\u00a0 to the common sense of the situation\u201d. Since the life of the law is not logic but experience and every legal proposition must, in the ultimate analysis, be tested\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on\u00a0 the touchstone of\u00a0 pragmatic realism, the audi <\/em>alteram partem <\/em>rule would, by the experiential test, be excluded, if importing the right to be heard has the effect of paralysing the administrative process or the need for promptitude or the urgency of the situation so demands. This is a rule of\u00a0 vital importance in\u00a0 the\u00a0field of administrative law and it must not be jettisoned save in very exceptional circumstances where compulsive necessity so demands. The audi alteram partem <\/em>rule is sufficiently flexible to permit modifications and variations to suit the exigencies of myriad kinds ofsituations which may arise.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n (In the Lead Judgement Authored by Bhagwati J.) It would not be right to conclude that the audi alteram partem <\/em>rule is excluded merely because the power to impound a passport might be frustrated, if prior notice and hearing\u00a0 were to be given to the person concerned before impounding his passport The Passport Authority may proceed to impound the passport without giving any prior opportunity to the person concerned to be heard, but as soon as the order impounding the passport is made, an opportunity of hearing, remedial in aim, should be given to him so that he may present his case and controvert that of the Passport Authority and point out why his passport should not be impounded and the order impounding it recalled. This should not only be possible but also quite appropriate, because the reasons for impounding the passport are required to be supplied by the Passport Authority after the making of the order and the person affected would, therefore, be in a position to make a representation setting forth\u00a0\u00a0 his case and plead for setting aside the action impounding his passport. A fair opportunity of being heard following immediately upon the order impounding the passport would satisfy the mandate of natural justice and a provision requiring giving of\u00a0 such opportunity to\u00a0 the person concerned can and should be\u00a0 read\u00a0 by implication in the Passports Act, 1967. If such a provision were held to be incorporated in the Passports Act, 1967 by necessary implication the procedure prescribed by the Act for impounding a passport would be right, fair and just\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and it would not suffer from the vice of arbitrariness or unreasonableness.\u00a0\u00a0 (dt. 25-1-1978)<\/p>\n Editorial<\/em><\/strong>: Different orders were passed, the lead judgement is of Bhagwati J.. Individual Judgements were passed by Chandrachud J., Krishna Iyer J. and Beg CJ. and Kailasam J. with a common theme upholding audi alteram partem but with slightly different views about the end result. A statement was made by the Ld. Attorney General that Petitioner would be allowed to make a representation which would be dealt with expeditiously which was considered by all the Judgements\u00a0 and influenced the outcomes. Followed in Sahara India (Firm) v. CIT [2008] 300 ITR 403 (SC) <\/em><\/strong>with reference to Section 142 of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The court that in certain cases the rule of audi alteram partem <\/em>could be observed by\u00a0\u00a0 the authorities after the action of impounding as<\/p>\n long as the action of impounding was succeeded by<\/p>\n providing the opportunity of hearing immediately thereafter for challenging the impounding action.<\/p>\n \u201cEven as wisdom often comes from the mouth of babes, so does it often come from the mouths of old people. The golden rule is to test everything\u00a0\u00a0 in the light of reason and experience, no matter from where it comes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n – Mahatma Gandhi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" .Constitution of India ,1950Issue<\/h3>\n
Views<\/h3>\n
Held<\/h3>\n
\n Art. 21:Protection of life and personal liberty – Natural Justice \u2013 Opportunity to be heard is universally recognized as an essential ingredient of principle of natural justice \u2013 Audi alteram partem \u2013 Even if not specifically provided for may be applicable by implication \u2013 Rules of natural Justice applicable to administrative action. [ Art . 14 ,19, Pass Port Act , 1976 , 10(3)(c ) ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allied-laws"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-3qp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13170,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169\/revisions\/13170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}