WIRE NETTING STORES Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The facts giving rise to the present writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution may briefly be noticed. Messrs Wire Metting Stores-Petitioner is a registered partnership firm and is mainly concerned in the supply of machinery parts of manure pulverising grading plants, which on 9th July, 1956, obtained licence No. N. 064672/55/NC/CCID from the Chief Controller of Imports and Exports for the import of parts of machinery required for industries and undertakings other than Cinemas and refrigerators of the vale of Rs.20,000.00 from soft currency areas during the period from January, 1956 to 31st December, 1957. The scope of the licence was circumscribed by an entry at its back in these terms :

(2.) The respondent conceded that the Deputy Collector, Customs passed the impugned order without giving any hearing to the petitioner but according to them it was not necessary because the hearing had been given earlier by the Assistant Collector, Customs on whose report the Deputy Collector, Customs, passed the order. They further admitted that the Departmental Authorities had found as a fact that the steel perforated sheets m question were capable of being used as component parts of both manure mills as well as rice mills, but added that the imports of the same was banned.

(3.) The learned counsel for the petitioner strenuously urged that the Deputy Collector, Customs, could not have passed the impurgned order (Annexure C) without giving the petitioner a hearing and that the bearing given by the Assistant Collector, Customs, to the petitioner on whose .report the impugned order was passed did not satisfy the condition that nobody should be condemned unheard. He relied on the case, Messrs Ramchand Jugdish Chand v. The Deputy Collector of Customs, Calcutta and which laid down :