AVINDER SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This heavy bunch of writ petitions impeaching the validity of a tax on foreign liquor raises a few familiar legal riddles. A rupee per bottle sold within every municipal town or city is the impugned levy, meant, according to the Punjab Government, to serve the twin purposes of replenishing the resources of municipal bodies reduced by house tax exemptions and of weaning drinkers from overly consuming foreign liquor as a prohibitionist gesture. To pick the pocket of every spirituous bibber of the higher brackets by a tiny tax may be but a feeble homage to Art. 47 of the Constitution, and to finance welfare projects with this tainted tax may be queer Gandhiana. The will to enforce 'dry' sobriety in society and to abolish massive human squalour by fleecing the fat few, is made of sterner stuff, maybe. But matters of means and ends, of policy and morality, are largely for the legislature and validity is the province of the court. We let slip the observation only because, from a certain angle, these dual grounds make odd companions and add to the credibility gap, although our focus is solely on the legality of the levy.

(2.) It is better to begin with the story of the tax under challenge. The petitioners are all licensees to trade in foreign liquor including Indian made foreign liquor. They are either wholesalers or retailers and pay excise duty and other fees and taxes including sales tax under the general sales tax law which imposes a levy of 10 per cent. on sales of foreign liquor. There are also octroi levies of 10 per cent. and educational tax of 2 per cent. and these add up to a considerable burden; but the commodity taxed is foreign liquor, Indian made or other, whose consumer usually belongs to the well-to-do sector.

(3.) The municipalities of Punjab are governed by two enactments. The numerous little ones are statutory bodies created and controlled by the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 and the few large ones by the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976 (the Act, for brevity, hereafter). For our purposes, the provisions run on identical terms and so we will take up the letter statute which compresses into one section a plurality of sections in the former, and set out the common scheme to study the critical issues raised. Arguments have been addressed only on this basis.