JAIN BROTHERS Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The above noticed 10 writ petitions have been on the 'Regular Board' of this Court for quite sometime. In view of the fact that nobody was appearing on behalf of the parties, we had sent for the counsel appearing for Union of India, and after his appearance on 25.1.2005, we had passed the following order:- % 25.01.2005 Present : None for the Petitioner. Mr. Amit Gupta for the Respondent. W.P.(C) No. 1812/1981 Counsel appearing for the Respondent states that he needs some time to reconstruct the file. List this case for disposal on 7th February, 2005 in the category of Regular Matters . In the meanwhile, the office of Mr. S.K. Dholakia, Advocate may be informed of the next date of hearing by the Registry by issuance of notice without process fee. The notice shall clearly states that no further adjournment will be allowed. Liberty is granted to counsel appearing for Union of India to inform Mr. Dholakia's office by means of a letter.

(2.) When the matters were taken up for hearing on 7th February, 2005, even on that date the Counsel for the petitioner was present only in four writ petitions i.e. W.P.(C) No. 1809/1981, W.P.(C) No. 1811/1981, W.P.(C) No. 1812/1981 and W.P.(C) No. 1813/1981, while in other cases, nobody appeared on behalf of the petitioner. Rather than dismissing those writ petitions for default of non-prosecution, we considered it appropriate to deal with these writ petitions as well, because common question of law arises in all these writ petitions based on somewhat similar facts. While disposing of all these petitions by a common judgment, we would be referring to the facts of W.P.(C) No. 1812/1981 which was taken as a lead case with the consent of the Counsel appearing for the parties.

(3.) Petitioner is a partnership firm carrying on inter alia the business of supply of various types of bearings to various industries including automobile industry. For the purpose of this business, it is required to import various types of bearings and for this purpose it obtained license from the Chief Controller of Imports and Exports. In terms of the Import Policy, the petitioner was allowed to import the goods described in entry no. 453 of Appendix-V to the Import Policy which reads as under:- Entry No. 453 - Bimetal, trimetal and Multimetal Bearings.'