MOHAMMAD YASIN Vs. DIST MAGISTRATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution which, in my opinion, is misconceived. The petitioner is a petition-writer who held a licence Issued by the Collector of Kanpur which permitted him to exercise his profession within the Collectorate at Kanpur. For this licence the petitioner made a quarterly payment of five rupees. Suspicion arose earlier in the year that the petitioner had been responsible for the typing of an anonymous letter addressed to the District and Sessions Judge, Kanpur. An enquiry of some kind was held and on the 1st September, 1953, the petitioner's licence as a petition-writer was cancelled by an order which reads as follows: The typing licence No. 17 issued to Sri Mohammad Yasin, a typist of the Collectorate Court Compound, Kanpur, has been cancelled for a period of five years with effect from 26-8-1953 for having worked in an objectionable manner. No application or papers written by him should be entertained in any court.

(2.) The petitioner has come to this Court from which he seeks a writ in the nature of 'certiorari' to quash this order of the 1st September. He claims that he has a fundamental right to carry on his profession of petition-writer in the Collectorate compound and that his licence can be cancelled only upon proof of the contravention of one of the conditions subject to which it was issued.

(3.) Sri Hamid Ullah Beg, who has strenuously argued the case for the petitioner, has however been wholly unable to satisfy me that the petitioner has any legal right, let alone a fundamental right, to carry on his profession or business in the Collectorate compound. The petitioner's case is I think wholly distinguishable from that of a person who is required by law to obtain a licence as a condition of carrying on his business or profession at all. Where the law lays down that a particular occupation cannot be carried on save under a licence, then the withdrawal of a licence has the obvious consequences of wholly preventing the person concerned from carrying on that business, and the question may very well arise whether there has been contravention of the provisions of Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. That appears to me very far from the position in the present case in which it is not in dispute that the petitioner is free to carry on his occupation in any place other than in the Collectorate. The petitioner has, in my opinion, no right to carry on his business in the Collectorate compound save with the permission of the Collector, and if that permission is withdrawn the petitioner may have a grievance, but I cannot see that he has any legal remedy unless it can be founded on breach of contract. The remedy for breach of contract is of course by way of suit. The petitioner must satisfy this Court that he has a legal right and that there has been an infringement of that right; this in my opinion he has failed to do.