ORDER : 1. The above two petitions were heard together and will be disposed of by this order. The petitioner Shivprasad has been detained in the Central Jail, Indore, by an order made on 28-06-1949 by the District Magistrate of Indore District under S.3, Maintenance of Public Order Act, VII (7) of 1949. The grounds for making the order and communicated to the petitioner were worded as follows: Whereas you have been found that you are an active member of the communist party and you have started open and secret communist activities along with your other communist and trying to create dissatisfaction among different classes of labourers and false propaganda against the Government established by law in India On 21-6-1949 you collected communists and labourers and held meeting and excited the labourers regarding bonus etc., by false propaganda. Further you have hired a house No.156 in Nayapura No.1 for the purpose of illegal activities and have been collecting communists and conspiring there secretly in the late hours of the night." The petitioner made an application against his detention under S.491, Criminal Procedure Code, saying that since the grounds for making the order of detention were vague and indefinite his detention was improper and he should be set at liberty. 2. Against Badrilal the second petitioner the order of detention under the same section of the same Act was passed by the same authority on 29-06-1949. The grounds for making the order of detention were precisely the same as in the case of Shivprasad except the ground appearing in the last sentence. For the same reason, he also has applied to this Court that the order of detention be held improper and that he be set at liberty under S.491, Criminal Procedure Code in force in the State. 3. The orders of detention have not been filed in the cases and this does not matter as the learned counsel Mr. Homi Daji appearing for the petitioners has not challenged the validity of the orders of detention made against the petitioners. All that is required to be decided in the cases is whether the grounds for making the orders of detention furnished to the applicants are in any manner defective and whether the defects are such as to make their detention in custody illegal or improper. All that is required to be decided in the cases is whether the grounds for making the orders of detention furnished to the applicants are in any manner defective and whether the defects are such as to make their detention in custody illegal or improper. The grounds for making the order of detention are required by S.5, Maintenance of Public Order Act to be communicated to the person detained and the object of this communication is that he may be able to make a representation to the authority detaining him against the order and move it to revoke the order under S.4 of the Act. To achieve this object the grounds should be intelligible and the grounds will be intelligible if they are specific, that is to say, they refer to specific acts believed by the detaining authority to have been done by the person detained and which induced the authority to make the order of detention against them. This, to my mind, is the obvious test to be applied to the allegation made against the person detained. Applying this test to the grounds furnished to the two petitioners as reproduced above I am of the opinion that they do not disclose any specific act or acts done by them which would enlighten them as to what they had done and against which they could lodge protest with the detaining authority. It is alleged in the grounds that on 21-06-1949, a meeting was held and labourers were excited "regarding bonus etc., by false propaganda." The District Magistrate does not say what they said to the labourers regarding bonus. The sentence itself is meaningless. "Regarding bonus etc." is meaningless and the obvious presumption to draw is that the District Magistrate was not told or did not know what had been said by the petitioners in connection with bonus or if he did know it the speech of the petitioners was so innocuous that it could not brook the light of the day. Similarly, it is alleged that the petitioners were creating dissatisfaction amongst labourers and indulged in false propaganda against the Government. The District Magistrate had not before him the speech because he does not say what words were uttered by the petitioners. Merely saying that the petitioners were active members of the communist party is again vague. Their activity as members of the communist party has not been specified. The District Magistrate had not before him the speech because he does not say what words were uttered by the petitioners. Merely saying that the petitioners were active members of the communist party is again vague. Their activity as members of the communist party has not been specified. It should have been alleged whether they were assisting the party with funds or by speech, and if it was a speech what was it which they said. The additional allegation made against Shivprasad is that he has hired a house for carrying on illegal activities, for collecting communist and for secretly conspiring in that house. These are all mere generalisations which have been held in more than one case decided by the High Courts in India to be too vague to enable the person detained to make representation against the order to the detaining authority. It will suffice to invite attention to a Full Bench case of Allahabad High Court reported in Durgadas v. Rex, AIR (36) 1949 ALL. 148: (40 Cr.L.J. 214 F.B.). The order made against some of the petitioners in this case reads as follows: "You are a zealous worker of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh which has been declared unlawful and persisted in the activities prejudicial to the public safety and maintenance of public order and communal harmony." The comment of the learned Judge was as follows: "Barring vague generalisations, there is nothing else, and except for denying the allegations made against him it does not appear how the detenu could have made an effective representation to the authorities concerned. For the reasons already given by me I am of the opinion that in this case also there has been no substantial compliance with S.5." This should be a sufficient answer to the arguments of the learned Advocate General appearing for the Government that in the territories of the late Holkar Government the communist party has been declared to be an illegal body. This is so but the statement that the detenu is a member of a body which has been declared unlawful is no more than a generalisation. This is so but the statement that the detenu is a member of a body which has been declared unlawful is no more than a generalisation. I repeat again that it is the specific acts which constitute the grounds of the order of detention and these should be conveyed to the person detained so that he may be able to know and understand what was it which rowed the detaining authority to make the order against him. 4. For this short reason I accept the petitions and hold that the continued detention of the petitioners is improper. They shall be set at liberty at once.