"Right of movement and residence throughout the territory of India are freely available to the Indian citizens, but these rights are not absolute. " Comment.

What is freely available, and to whom

• Only citizens hold Article 19 freedoms; the text of Article 19 opens with “all citizens.”
• Movement under 19(1)(d) is intra-India mobility; residence and settlement under 19(1)(e) is the right to make a home in any part of the territory, subject to law.
• Foreigners, including those on visa or facing deportation, cannot claim 19(1)(d) or (e); they may invoke Article 21 against arbitrary detention or expulsion, as in the Louis De Raedt and later foreigner-liberty line, but that is a different and narrower protection.
• Travel abroad is not 19(1)(d); Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India treated passport and foreign travel as personal liberty under Article 21, which is why a comment must not collapse the two Articles.

Why the rights are not absolute

• Article 19(5) allows reasonable restrictions, in the interests of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe, on the rights in 19(1)(d) and (e).
• Inner Line arrangements under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, and related State rules in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram (and later Manipur) limit entry and stay of non-residents in order to protect tribal land and social systems; they are a living illustration of the Scheduled Tribe limb of 19(5).
• Special constitutional settlements such as Article 371A for Nagaland, and land-and-allotment restrictions in several Fifth and Sixth Schedule areas, similarly fence settlement even for Indian citizens from outside the area.
• Public-order, epidemic, and disaster laws can restrict movement if they satisfy reasonableness; a blanket, indefinite internal passport for all citizens would not.
• Reasonableness after Maneka Gandhi is not a rubber stamp: the restriction must be fair, and it must have a rational connection with the 19(5) objects.

Comment that is balanced

• The statement is correct as a statement of Part III: citizens have a nationwide freedom of movement and residence that foreigners do not, and that freedom is qualified.
• The comment should add that the qualification is itself constitutional, not a favour of the executive, and that tribal-protection limits are part of the original design, not an afterthought.
• Abuse of inner-line or domicile rules to keep out labour or to punish political opponents would fail 19(5); the existence of limits is not a licence for arbitrary exclusion.