Defence of India act and Defence of India rules, 1962
The Defence of India act and Defence of India rules, 1962 were a set of emergency war-time legislations for preventive detention enacted in October 1962 India during the Sino-Indian War of 1962. It was initially promulgated as a Presidential ordinance, the Defence of India Ordinance, 1962 on 28 October that year under the authority of which the Defence of India Rules were enacted. In December 1962, the Indian Parliament enacted the Defence of India act, 1962 which consolidated the continued application of the ordinance as law. The act consisted of 156 rules that "regulated virtually all aspects of life" including travel, finance, trade, communication, publication etc and were essentially identical to the Defence of India act, 1939 enacted during World War II. The act suspended the Fundamental rights of any person held under the act, and specifically Rule 30 of the act allowed the government to hold any person in detention without explanation suspending the right under the article 22 of Constitution of India, without the right to representation, and without the provisions of Habeas corpus.
The act was infamous in having been used on a widespread scale against Indians of Chinese ethnicity during and after the war, many of whom were taken from their homes, mainly from the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, to a detention centre in Deoli, in the state of Delhi.
See also
- Defence of India Act, 1915
- Persecution of Chinese Indians
References
- Emergency Powers and the Courts in India and Pakistan. Imtiaz Omar. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2002. pp89–93.
- How Chinese-Indians paid the price for 1962 war By Sandip Roy. 18 February 2016
