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Tere Tee AT ee STAT 1 ARTICLE-21 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA Justice N. K. Jain* As you all know, Article 21 deals with one of the fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. The Right to Protection of Life and personal liberty is the main object of Article 21 and it is a right guaranteed against State Action as distinguished from violation of such right by private individuals. In other words, in case of violation of such rights (which are guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution of India) by private individuals, the person aggrieved must seek his remedies under the general law. Article 21 being one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, the same cannot be taken away by statutes. It is also necessary to mention at this juncture itself before we proc3eed to analyse Article 21 in detail that it has been held by our Hon’ble Supreme Court in Behram Vs. State of Bombay (1995 (1) SCR 613) that fundamental rights have been put into our Constitution on grounds of public policy and in pursuance of the objects declared in the preamble; though these rights are primarily for the benefit of individuals and hence there can be no question of a fundamental right being waived. INGREDIENTS OF ARTICLE 21 : Article 21 of the Constitution read thus : “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure by law.” 2 URROTA Tea AAT STAT Article 21 of the Constitution came up for interpretation number of times before our Apex Court, and the Supreme Court dealt with each aspect of Article 21 exhaustively and from a reading of those decisions the following ingredients emerge. PERSON : It is clear from a bare perusal of the Article that the protection extended by it covers all ‘Persons’. In other words the expression of ‘Person’ is not confined only to citizens but extends to every persons regardless of nationality or the circumstances in which a person is placed. This implies that the protection guaranteed under article 21 extends even to persons who are undergoing imprisonment in jails. A prisoner does not lose all the fundamental rights belonging to all persons under the Constitution merely because he is convicted and imprisoned. Therefore the right under Article 21 of the Constitution can also be pressed into service by a prisoner as regards his right to freedom of expression, reading and writing, right to acquire, hold and dispose of property and right against discrimination. In view of the clear provisions of Article 367(1) of the Constitution, Section 3(42) of General Clauses Act can be pressed into service in so far as the definition of ‘Person’ is concerned. As per the definition of ‘Person’ in General Clauses Act, that expression includes not only a natural person but also a juristic person, a deity or a Gurudwara. DEPRIVED : The second ingredient of Article 21 is that the said Article comes into picture only when there is deprivation of life or 
