P B SAMANT Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners challenge the method of distribution of ad hoc cement in the State of Maharashtra as being contrary to the rule of law and probity in public life. Initially the petitioners has also challenged the vires of the Foreign Exchange Remittance Scheme. However, at the conclusion of the arguments, that challenge was not pressed.

(2.) The petitioner are social workers and consumers of cement. The 1st respondent is the State of Maharashtra. The 2nd respondent is the Chief Minister. The 3rd respondent is the Union of India.

(3.) It is the petitioners case that as social workers and members of "Samajwadi Manch", an organisation committed to seeing that sale and distribution of essential commodities is done in an equitable manner, they received several complaints from the public that cement was not available from the rationing offices either for building or repair work, that bona fide applications for cement were side-tracked and that cement was given in large quantities to persons who had secured recommendations from the 2nd respondent, Ministers and M.L.As. As the petitioners needed cement for urgent monsoon repairs to their houses, they applied for 5 bags each to the Deputy Controller of Rationing (Bombay Region). However, no cement was made available to them. The petitioners came to know that large quantities of cement were being allotted by the 2nd respondent directly from Mantralaya in violation and circumvention of the statutory distribution scheme. In order to ascertain the factual position for himself, the 1st petitioner visited the Food and Civil Supplies Department in Mantralaya in June 1981, where a notice was displayed that no applications for cement would be entertained at Mantralaya and that all pending applications received in the department had been forwarded to the respective cement distribution committees through the Controller of Rationing/Collector and that future enquiries should be made with the Tahsildar/Food Grains Distribution Officers/Deputy Controller of Rationing concerned. It is the petitioners grievance that despite this notice and in violation of the statutory cement distribution scheme, large quantities of cement were unauthorisedly, arbitrarily and mala fide allotted directly from Mantralaya by the 2nd respondent to builders, as a quid pro quo for contributions to certain trusts created and controlled by the 2nd respondent in his private capacity and of which he is a trustee, with the result that bona fide applicants received a meagre, and in some instances no allocation at all. Instances of such cement allocation and distribution ranging from 350 tonnes to 1,000 tonnes to builders have been set out in the petition. The petitioners are indignant, inter alia, that (i) whereas in D Zone (Bandra to Dahisar) 4,128 applications are pending for want of cement, it received only 8,808 tonnes against 16,660 tonnes allocated by the Deputy Controller of Rationing, as against which seven applicants named in the petition received 6,150 tonnes and 142 applicants received 20,260 tonnes directly from Mantralaya, which far exceeded the allocation to the entire D Zone itself; (ii) in 1981, out of 900 applicants, not a single applicant received any cement; (iii) out of several thousand applicants who required cement for mansoon repairs, cement was received by a very small percentage and in extremely small quantities. It is, however, not merely on this indignation expressed by the petitioners but on the principles involved, that a judicial finding must be arrived at in this petition.