P L D 1958 (W (PLP)

(a) West Punjab Public Safety Act (XVIII of 1949). (as subsequently amended)‑History of amendments. (b) West Punjab Public Safety Act (XVIII of 1949), S. 3 read with Art. 7 (4), Constitution of Pakistan‑S. 3 not invalid for lack of a provision for examination of detenu's case by the Advisory Board, as envisaged in Art. 7(4)‑Incorporation of such a provision not necessary for validity of Act‑Detention under S. 3 legal if provisions of Art. 7 (4) complied with‑Art. 7 (4) guarantees "another" fundamental right and does not prescribe a qualification for validity of preventive detention laws‑West Pakistan Preventive Detention Laws (Amendment) Ordinance (V1 of 1956), S. 2‑Lapse of Ordinance‑Effect. Held, that clause (4) of Article 7, Constitution of Pakistan guarantees another fundamental right; it does not prescribe a special qualification for laws relating to preventive detention in the sense that without including such a provision that law would be invalidated. The result is that the detention could be challenged if in fact the provisions of clause (4) of Article 7 were not complied with in cases of detention exceeding three months. In the present cases, the provisions of that clause had been strictly complied with, despite the omission of the amend ments introduced in the Act by West Pakistan Preventive Detention Laws (Amendment) Ordinance VI of 1956, the omission being the consequence of lapsing of the Ordi nance itself by flux of time. Orders of detention, therefore, did not suffer from any legal defect on this ground. Prahalad Jona and others v. State A I R 1950 Orissa 157 and Brahmeshwar Prasad v. State of Bihar A I R 1950 Pat. 265 distinguished. Fazal Ahmad Ghazi v. The State P L D 1957 Kar. 190 dissented from. (c) Constitution of Pakistan, Art. 7 (5)‑Incorporation, in a detention law, of provision in regard to communication of grounds of detention not necessary for validity of detention law. That a provision with regard to communication of grounds of detention had to be included in a detention law, in order to make it valid, appears to be untenable on the plain wording of Article 7 of the Constitution. Clause (5) of that Article is clearly independent of clause (4) and merely guarantees to the detenu the right of being supplied with the grounds of detention by the detaining authority, as soon as may be, but does not prescribe that the detention law must necessarily contain any such provision. (d) Interpretation of Statutes‑ Courts should lean in favour of constitutionality of statutes. Courts should normally lean in favour of constitutionality of statutes and if two interpretations of a constitutional provision are possible, one of which would invalidate a statute while the other would support its validity, the second inter pretation should be preferred. (e) Ordinance‑ Ceasing to operate by lapse of time‑May be treated as never having existed, being a temporary enactment- Constitution of Pakistan, Art. 102. (f) West Pakistan Preventive Detention Laws (Amendment) Ordinance (VI of 1956) Lapse of, by flux of time‑Effect on S.3, West Punjab Public Safety Act (XVIII of 1949) (as amended subsequently)‑West Pakistan General Clauses Act VI of 1956), S. 4 (2). If it is assumed that subsection (2) of section 4 of the West Pakistan General Clauses Act (VI of 1956) is not incon sistent with Article 102 of the Constitution and full effect is given to its provisions, the conclusion may be that sub sections (6) to (8) of section 3 of the West Pakistan Public Safety Act (XVIII of 1949) (as subsequently amended) stand deleted because they were not in force at the time when the Ordinance lapsed, having been replaced by new subsections introduced by that Ordinance. On the expiry of the Ordi nance those new subsections also vanished. The Act would, however, remain workable without these provisions as it would only mean that a reference to the Chief Justice of the High Court would no longer be possible. On the alternative view, if it is suggested that subsection (2) of section 4 of the Provincial General Clauses Act is ultra vires the Constitution, then it would only mean that the provisions of subsections (6) to (8) enabling a reference to be made to the Chief Justice of the High Court would be revived. Those provisions cannot be attacked as being inconsistent with Article 7 of the Consti tution as they may only ensure a cumulative remedy to the detained person by way of approach to the Chief Justice in addition to the fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. On either view, therefore, section 4 (2) of the Provincial General Clauses Act does not affect the position materially. (g) Constitution of Pakistan, Part II Cannot be automatically read into all relevant enactment. Held, that Fundamental Rights included in Part II of the Constitution of Pakistan cannot be read into all relevant enactments as it would rob Article 4 (1) of the Constitution, of all meaning.