Article 22(1) is a provision enshrined in Part III of the Constitution of India, which guarantees fundamental rights and provides essential procedural safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention. It mandates two key rights for any person who is arrested. First, the arrested person must be informed of the grounds for such arrest "as soon as may be". Second, the person shall not be denied the right to consult, and to be defended by, a legal practitioner of their choice.
The provision was introduced as Draft Article 15A and debated on September 15 and 16, 1949, as a late addition to the Constitution. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, proposed it to compensate for the decision to replace the phrase "without due process of law" with "procedure established by law" in what is now Article 21. The purpose was to elevate statutory safeguards for detainees into constitutional guarantees, thereby protecting personal liberty from arbitrary state action.
Article 22(1) is the first clause of Article 22, which is closely connected to the fundamental right to life and personal liberty under Article 21. The safeguards in Article 22(1) and the subsequent Article 22(2) (the 24-hour rule for production before a magistrate) are explicitly made inapplicable to enemy aliens and persons detained under preventive detention laws by Article 22(3). The Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), through sections like Section 56 and Section 167, also supports these constitutional rights. The text of Article 22(1) has not been amended; while the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978, proposed changes to other clauses of Article 22, particularly clauses (4) and (7) concerning preventive detention, these specific amendments were never enforced, leaving the original provisions of Article 22(1) unchanged.