The Court was dealing with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Advocate Jai A Dehadrai challenging Rule 585 of the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018.
The plea sought an amendment to the Rules so as to allow interviews with legal advisers to be open from Monday to Friday for an appropriate allotted time, with no cap on interviews per week. It was argued that limiting the number of meetings is violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
In its response, the State argued that there are 16 Jails in Delhi housing more than 18,000 prisoners against the sanctioned capacity of 10,026. The government said that given the number of inmates, a decision was taken to put a cap on the number of visits.
It further said that in no other State are prisoners allowed visits more than two times a week and the Model Prison Manual only permits visits once in a fortnight.
Source: Barandbench
