The Division Bench of High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh consisting of Chief Justice Tashi Rabstan and Justice M A Chowdhary has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation filed by Advocate  Syed Tassadque Hussain, Senior Advocate challenging the provisions of J&K Public Safety Act, 1978. In the said PIL the petitioner amongst other reliefs sought the relief for direction to the Union of India to bring into force the amendments made to Article 22 of the Constitution of India.

Mr D.C.Raina , Ld. Advocate General objected to the PIL raising a preliminary objection of its non-maintainability for the reason that it does not meet the requisite conditions for filing PIL and also that the reliefs sought are outside the preview of PIL Jurisdiction of the court. He further argued that argued that as the persons who are detained under the Public Safety Act have already approached this Court by filing habeas corpus petitions questioning therein their detention orders, which fact is also admitted by the petitioner, therefore, the issue raised in this PIL cannot be considered as it would tantamount to double adjudication on the same issue.

The court rejected the PIL as being non-maintainable while holding that since the issue of detention of citizens as raised in this petition is already pending adjudication before this Court, therefore, in our considered opinion, this PIL is not maintainable as being a parallel litigation.