Right to apply for bail implicit in Articles 14, 19, 21 of Constitution: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently took exception to the Rajasthan High Court's orders directing its registry to not list bails, appeals, applications for suspension of sentence and revisions as "extremely urgent" matters (High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan vs. The State of Rajasthan).A Bench of Justices Nageswara Rao and Aniruddha Bose stated that the right to apply for bail is implicit in Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution and cannot be taken away by judicial order.“Such right has been taken away by judicial order, without compliance of procedure established by law, which in our constitutional jurisprudence, is akin to “the due process” dictum. Right to apply for bail is an individual right implicit in Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution," the Court said.The Bench was hearing a plea by the Rajasthan High Court registry against a judicial order passed by a single-judge directing police authorities not to make arrests in cases of offences carrying maximum three years sentence and the registry to not list bail matters. These orders were passed citing Covid-19 pandemic..By the time, the matter came up for hearing before the Supreme Court, both the bail applications had been rejected. The Bench observed that even though under ordinary circumstances, the appeals would have been dismissed as infructuous, it decided to express an opinion on the subject matter of the controversy..The Bench stated that the orders impacted the operation of legislative provisions on right to apply for bail and encroached on the Chief Justice’s administrative powers on allocation of business to judges of the Court.“Such sweeping orders in our adversarial adjudicatory system would be contrary to law as many persons would be impacted by such orders without having any knowledge of the proceeding," the Court said..A blanket ban on listing of applications would block access to seekers of liberty and in substance suspend their fundamental rights and would also have the impact of temporarily eclipsing statutory provisions, the Bench further opined.Therefore, it concluded that considering comprehensive guidelines detailed under Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar, there was no need for the single-judge to issue such blanket directives.“The directions issued had the potential for breaching the constitutional and legal rights of individuals who could be or are arraigned in criminal action and also put fetters on power of investigating agencies,” the judgment said..Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria appeared for the Rajasthan High Court..[Read Judgment]