ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla*

ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla, AIR 1976 SC 1207 — popularly the Habeas Corpus case — was decided by a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on 28 April 1976, at the height of the Internal Emergency proclaimed under Article 352 on 25 June 1975. By a Presidential Order under Article 359(1) issued on 27 June 1975, the right of any person to move any court for enforcement of the rights conferred by Articles 14, 21 and 22 was suspended for the duration of the Emergency. The question before the Court was whether a detenu under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), 1971, could maintain a writ of habeas corpus challenging unlawful detention notwithstanding that suspension. Several High Courts (Bombay, Delhi, Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka) had held that they could still examine whether a detention order was legally valid; the Union appealed.

The majority — Chief Justice A.N. Ray and Justices M.H. Beg, Y.V. Chandrachud and P.N. Bhagwati — held that in view of the Presidential Order, no person had any locus standi to move a writ petition under Article 226 before a High Court for habeas corpus to challenge the legality of detention on the ground that it was not in compliance with the law or was mala fide. The majority reasoned that Article 21 was the sole repository of the right to life and personal liberty, so once recourse to it was barred, no remedy survived even against a patently illegal or malicious detention. The lone dissent of Justice H.R. Khanna held that the rule of law did not derive solely from Article 21 and that the State could not deprive a person of life or liberty without lawful authority even during Emergency — a dissent that cost him the Chief Justiceship when he was superseded in January 1977.

The judgment is universally regarded as one of the darkest moments in the Court's history. Justice Bhagwati later publicly recanted his concurrence, and in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the nine-judge privacy bench expressly overruled ADM Jabalpur, declaring that its majority view was "seriously flawed" and that fundamental rights are inherent and not gifts of the Constitution. The Forty-fourth Amendment Act, 1978 subsequently amended Article 359 so that the rights under Articles 20 and 21 can never be suspended even during an Emergency, statutorily reversing the case's premise. As of 2026 the decision stands fully overruled and survives only as a cautionary precedent.

For the UPSC examination, ADM Jabalpur is a staple of GS Paper II (Polity & Governance) and the post-Independence history segment, frequently tested alongside the 1975–77 Emergency, the 42nd and 44th Amendments, and the evolution of Article 21 from A.K. Gopalan (1950) through Maneka Gandhi (1978). Typical question angles ask candidates to contrast the majority with Khanna's dissent, to explain how the 44th Amendment and the Puttaswamy overruling neutralised it, and to discuss judicial independence in light of the supersession of judges.