COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL Vs. KAMLESH VADILAL MEHTA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) -The respondent herein, is a sole proprietor of a Chartered Accountant firm in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. One of the statutory functions assigned to the appellants herein is to get the accounts of public sector undertakings and Governments concerns audited by the Chartered Accountants. The audit work of the Government and public sector undertakings is assigned to only those Chartered Accountant firms which are enrolled on the panel maintained by the appellant. In May, 1981, the appellant through an advertisement invited applications from the firms of the Chartered Accountants for the purpose of empanelment for audit of Government companies. The aforesaid advertisement stipulated that excepting the States of Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, only the partnership firm of the Chartered Accountants were eligible for enrollment on the panel and the proprietary firms of the Chartered Accountants were made ineligible either to apply or to be empanelled for being assigned audit work of the Government companies. However, in several States the proprietary firm based on those States was made eligible for being brought on the panel for audit work of Government companies and concerns. It would be appropriate at this stage to extract the relevant Clause 3 and sub-clause (d) of Clause 4 to the advertisement, which runs as under :

(2.) The said writ petition came up for hearing before a Learned single Judge of the High Court of Gujarat, who, by a judgment and order on 26-4-82 allowed the writ petition. The learned single Judge was of the view that the policy followed by the appellant was unreasonable and that such sub-classification had no real nexus with the objects sought to be achieved. The learned single Judge while holding that the exclusion of proprietary concern from being enrolled on the panel is discriminatory issued following direction :

(3.) The appellant filed Letters Patent Appeal before the Division Bench of the High Court, but the same was dismissed. It is against the said judgment and order of the High Court, the appellant is before us.