TRIVENI ENGINEERING WORKS LIMITED Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All these writ petitions relate to grant of letters of intent (LOIs, in brief) to different industrial undertakings for setting up new sugar mills at different places in the State of Uttar Pradesh. The above petitions have been filed by existing sugar mills and by certain competitors and the LOIS have been challenged on different grounds. On the basis of the points raised, writ petitions may be categorised in 3 classes :(1) Petitions in which the guidelines of the Government have been challenged as having violated the provisions of Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution;(2) the petitions in which the validity of the guidelines have not been seriously challenged but the action of the Government have been challenged on the ground that the guidelines have been violated; and(3) one petition in which a competitor for a location of a new sugar mill has challenged the LOI in favour of another on the ground of nonobservance of statutory provisions of certain Acts and Rules.

(2.) We shall come to the details of these petitions in subsequent paragraphs.

(3.) The sugar industry is a controlled industry in the sense that the Government has a control on the sugarcane production, distribution, prices, as also on the production, marketing of the finished product, sugar. By sugar, we mean the sugar produced by the process known as vacuum pan process. The sugar factories produce sugar through this process only. There are other crushers and units to produce khandsari and gur for which also legislations are there to control the production etc., but we are concerned in these writ petitions with sugar only and not with khandsari and gur etc. except for some passing reference to the legislations controlling khandsari. Legislations for sugar and sugarcane are both Central and State ones. The first one we may refer to is Sugar Cane Act, 1934 (Central Act No. XV of 1934). It regulates the price of sugarcane intended for usein sugar factories. It empowers the State Government to declare any area as a controlled area, and also to fix a minimum price for purchase of sugarcane in that area. We may also refer to Sugar Cane Control Order 1966, which was made by the Central Government under its power under Section 3 of the Essential Commodities Act. This order speaks of the controlled reserved area which means any area where sugar-cane is grown and reserved for a factory under sub-clause (I )(a) of Clause 6. Clause 6 speaks of power to regulate distribution and movement of sugarcane and the Central Government is authorised to notify any area as reserved area where sugarcane is grown for a factory having regard to the crushing capacity of the factory and availability of sugarcane in that reserved area and the need for production of sugar with a view to enabling the factory to produce the quantity of sugar cane required by it. The same clause also empowers the Central Government to determine the quantity of sugarcane a factory will require for crushing in any year. This order also empowers the Central Government to license power crushers and khandsari units and to regulate khandsari units and to regulate purchase of sugar by them. Under clause 1 of the Sugarcane Control Order the Central Government has a right to delegate the powers under clause 6 and 'other clauses to State Government or any officer `or any authority of a State Government.