RAJA INDUSTRIES Vs. GENERAL MANAGERDISTRICT INDUSTRIES CENTREERNAKULAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Time was when Kerala abounded in wood-wealth Including softwood. The State had the second biggest timber market in the world, Kallai. These, however, appear now, as matters of distant glory, fading memory, and a boast about the past. Almost like that of the well known Malayalam literary character who used to say "My Great Grand-Pa had an elephant".

(2.) Scarcity in timber supply is now keenly felt. Wood-based industries starve for raw materials. Scarcity has generated problems of resource mobilisation and equitable distribution. Ad hoc adjustments were initially introduced, Lasting problems, however, require more enduring solutions. The solutions must be reasonable, rational and just. That is a constitutional requirement. Whether the solution evolved by the State in relation to softwood distribution -- the policy of distribution as evolved by the softwood Committee which met on 17-6-1980 - stands the test of constitutionality judged by Article 14 and Article 19 of the Constitution, is the main question which arises for decision in the two writ petitions.

(3.) The factual details leading to the institution, of the writ petition by two frustrated industrialists whose race for raw materials turned out to be a wild goose chase, may be set out in brief. First the facts in O. P. 3304 of 1980, filed by Messrs. Raja Industries, Perumbavoor, Established in the year I960, the unit had been engaged in the manufacture of bobbin blocks and packing cases. While cedar was used for the former, and softwood species for the latter. The industry had been registered as a small scale unit. It was issued a certificate of registration in the year 1963 and a renewal in 1973. (This, I was told was done as a result of deep and detailed verification done in 1972 about all the units registered as Small Scale Industries, with a view to weed out the spurious or fictitious ones). It is claimed that the petitioner's unit is the second biggest in the State.