Elected representatives, legislators, India: General issues
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Age of retirement
Voters’ choices
Mohammed Wajihuddin & Sharmila Ganesan Ram, TNN, July 5, 2023: The Times of India
Mumbai: To most politicians in India, age is just a number. They do not quit unless forced by providence or circumstances. It is in this context that “mutinous” nephew Ajit Pawar’s no-holds-barred comment on uncle Shard Pawar’s age — “he is 83” — has reignited a debate on whether there should be a retirement age for politicians too.
Many readers felt that like other professionals, politicians too should retire, if not at 60, at least by the time they turn 75. “After a certain age, they seem to stop taking interest in public welfare and start taking the public for granted. It becomes a game of projection and power and about staying in the limelight,” says Anandini Thakoor. She suggests politicians must retire after 70.
If 70 is too early to hang up the boots for politicians, 75, as BJP has made a rule, should be the age to retire. This is what even Ajit Pawar suggested: “In other parties, leaders retire after an age. BJP leaders retire at 75. When are you going to stop? You should also give new people a chance. ”
The common man cannot understand why netas work at an age when many others hang up their boots. “I will continue till my limbs cooperate,” says Belapurbased 48-year-old shoeshine man Rajaram Shobharam. “There should be a retirement age in politics,” says the shoeshine man who began working in 2002.
Author and columnist Shobhaa De says there should not be a retirement age for politicians as “experience and maturity matter”. However, about Pawar she says: “It’s not about age. . . It’s about wisdom and astuteness. Pawar’s age cannot be used against him but his lack of wisdom in this situation is more than apparent. ”
Puppet theatre veteran Meena Naik agrees. “I believe that while actors can act till the audience appreciate them and writers can write till the end, politicians should have a retirement age. ”
Citing veteran industrialist Ratan Tata who retired from his own company when he turned 75, Matunga resident K A Viswanathan says: “Business executives become more knowledgeable and experienced when they grow older. They also lose their perks once they leave the chair. But politicians stick to their chair well into their 80s and 90s, enjoying many comforts at the taxpayers’ expense. When the government has fixed the retirement age for bureaucrats, why not a retirement age for politicians too?”
Arresting a legislator
The Bhim Singh and Mehraj Malik cases
Vineet Bhalla, Sep 12, 2025: The Indian Express
Mehraj Malik, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) lone MLA in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), was arrested under the stringent J&K Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978 on Monday (September 8). According to officials of the Union Territory, Malik, who represents the Doda constituency, was detained for one year on charges of disturbing public order.
While Malik’s arrest under the controversial PSA is a first, it is not the first time a sitting MLA in J&K has been detained by the police. Indeed Malik’s arrest brings back memories of a 40-year-old case, in which the Supreme Court (SC) came down heavily on the state police for the illegal arrest and detention of MLA Bhim Singh.
Arrested for ‘hate speech’
Singh, then an MLA from Chenani, Jammu, was scheduled to attend the budget session of the J&K Assembly in Srinagar on September 11, 1985 when he was picked up unceremoniously by the police.
An FIR had been registered against Singh on September 9, alleging that he delivered an inflammatory speech at a public meeting in Jammu the previous evening. Subsequently, the Superintendent of Police, Anantnag, was informed that Singh “required to be apprehended as he was wanted in a case registered Under Section 153-A (hate speech) of Ranbir Penal Code.”
Singh was travelling by road from Jammu to Srinagar on the intervening night of September 9-10. At around 3 am on September 10, he was intercepted and arrested by the police at a place called Qazi Kund, about 70 km from Srinagar.
The SC later noted that the SP had issued instructions for Singh’s arrest before officially receiving information about the FIR against him. It noted that “quite obviously even before he had received any information from the Police Control Room about the alleged case registered against Shri Bhim Singh, [the SP] had instructed the Officer-in-charge Police Station Qazi Kund to arrest Shri Bhim Singh if he came within his jurisdiction.”
After his arrest, Singh was not taken to a magistrate. Instead, he was moved first to the district headquarters in Anantnag, then to the Jammu city police station in the evening of September 10. From here, he was transferred to the Pacca Danga police station in Jammu later in the night.
His wife, unable to trace him, filed a petition in the SC.
SC rains down on police
The SC noted that the police had obtained remand orders from an executive magistrate and a sub-judge. But they did so at the magistrates’ residences after office hours and crucially, without ever physically producing Singh before them.
Singh was finally produced before a magistrate for the first time on September 14, four days after his arrest — in violation of the constitutional mandate to produce an arrested person before a judicial magistrate within 24 hours.
The SC, in its judgment delivered on November 22, 1985, condemned the actions of the state police. The Bench, comprising Justices O Chinnappa Reddy and V Khalid, held that Singh’s constitutional rights under Articles 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) and 22(2) (right to be produced before a magistrate) were “gross[ly] violated… with impunity”.
The court noted the “surreptitious nature of the conduct of the police” and how the magistrates had acted in a “very casual way…without any sense of responsibility or genuine concern for the liberty of the subject.” It concluded that the police officers had acted deliberately and with mala fide intent.
The judgment speculated on the motive behind what it termed “high-handed[ness]”, stating that the only inference that could be drawn was that the authorities were “bent upon preventing [Singh] from attending the session of the Legislative Assembly”. The SC remarked on the abuse of power: “If the personal liberty of a Member of the Legislative Assembly is to be played with in this fashion, one can only wonder what may happen to lesser mortals!”
In an indictment of the police’s actions, the court said: “Police Officers…should not flout the laws by stooping to such bizarre acts of lawlessness. Custodians of law and order should not become depredators of civil liberties. Their duty is to protect and not to abduct.”
Compensation for lost liberty
By the time the case was decided, Singh had already been released on bail. Therefore, an order to set him at liberty was no longer necessary. However, the court felt that the “mischief or malice” of the illegal detention could not be “washed away or wished away by his being set free”.
Therefore, the court directed the State of J&K, as it then was, to pay Singh a sum of Rs 50,000 as monetary compensation. The Bhim Singh judgment remains a cornerstone of Indian constitutional law, often featuring in judgements and court pleadings as an example of judicial check on the arbitrary exercise of power by the executive and the police.
Malik’s arrest & J&K PSA
The PSA is a preventive detention law that empowers law enforcement agencies to detain individuals for up to two years without a formal charge or trial. Enacted in 1978 by the Sheikh Abdullah-led government, its stated aim was to curb timber smuggling. However, over the decades, it has been alleged to have been used by successive governments to detain political opponents, separatists and protesters. Malik is a 37-year-old first-time MLA from Doda in Jammu. He won AAP its first-ever seat in the UT in the Assembly polls last year. Officials claim he has been named in 18 first information reports (FIRs) and was “increasingly causing a disturbance to public order”.
Malik’s detention is not an isolated instance of an AAP member facing the PSA: in April this year, an AAP worker from Doda, Mohd Rafi, was also booked under the same act.
The law’s application remains a contentious issue, with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah stating in the J&K Assembly in March that the PSA was being misused against youth with “no cases against them”, claiming 400 such individuals were currently in jail.
