Tamil Nadu News

Advisory Board for Preventive Detention

August 31 , 2026 8 hrs 0 min 5 0

T.N. government reconstitutes Advisory Board for Preventive Detention.
A Government Order to this effect was issued by the Home, Prohibition, and Excise Department.
The Tamil Nadu government has recently reconstituted the Advisory Board of the Tamil Nadu Preventive Detention Act, 1982, and appointed retired Madras High Court judge Justice V. Bharathidasan as its Chairman.
According to the order, P. Kalaiyarasan and V. Parthiban, both retired judges of the Madras High Court, were appointed as members.
An Advisory Board is a constitutional body of judges that reviews whether sufficient cause exists to detain a person beyond three months under a preventive detention law.
An Advisory Board is the constitutional safeguard that limits the executive's power of preventive detention in India, anchored in Article 22(4) of the Constitution.
Preventive detention—confinement without trial to forestall a future apprehended act, as distinct from punitive detention for a proven offence—was deliberately retained by the framers despite its illiberal character, but hedged with procedural checks.
Article 22(4) provides that no law authorizing preventive detention may permit detention beyond three months unless an Advisory Board, constituted in accordance with the recommendations of the Chief Justice of the appropriate High Court, has reported before the expiry of that period that there is in its opinion sufficient cause for such detention.
The composition of the Advisory Board is itself a safeguard.
As amended after the 44th Constitutional Amendment debate, the prevailing statutory position requires the Board to consist of three persons who are, or have been, or are qualified to be appointed as, judges of a High Court.
The Chairman must be a sitting judge of a High Court.
The Board is constituted on the recommendation of the appropriate Chief Justice, insulating it from direct executive selection.
The 44th Amendment of 1978 sought to reduce the period of detention permissible without Board reference from three months to two and to add a retired-judge composition requirement, but the relevant provisions were never brought into force, so the three-month constitutional floor of Article 22(4) continues to govern.