SHAJI Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners are private hospitals. Some of them are run in municipal areas whereas some others are located in Panchayats. THEy are aggrieved by the prospects of levy of fees by the concerned Municipalities and Panchayats under the provisions of the Kerala Municipalities Act, 1994 and the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, 1994. THE grievance of the hospitals working in the municipal area may be summarised as follows:

(2.) UNDER S. 313 of the Municipality Act, every private hospital has to get registration after paying the prescribed fee. S. 314a authorises the Municipality to levy fees for any services rendered to those hospitals by the Municipality. The petitioners do not have any grievance regarding the registration fee or the fee levied by them for rendering some special services to them. But they feel aggrieved by the payment of licence fee under S. 447. S. 447 (1) reads as follows: A Municipality may notify by publication in the Gazette or in any other manner as may be prescribed that no place within the municipal area shall be used for any one or more of the purposes specified in the Sixth Schedule or for any other trade without a licence and except in accordance with the conditions specified therein and where the licence is for running hostels, restaurants, eating houses, coffee houses, Abkari shop, laundries, travel agency or barber saloons, the licence shall always contain and be deemed to contain a condition that admission or service therein shall be available to any member of the public. Provided that no notification under this sub-section shall take effect before the expiry of sixty days from the date of its publication. In view of the above provision, unless the Rules are framed authorising the grant of licence and levy of fee for the same, the petitioners submit that they need not take out any license under the Municipality Act. The learned counsel appearing for the Municipalities submitted that so far no Rules have been framed under S. 447. If that be so, there cannot be any levy of license fee under S. 447 from the private hospitals working in the municipal area. It is declared so.