STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH Vs. G MASTAN RAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Writ Appeal, preferred by the Government, is directed against the judgment of our learned brother, Chinnappa Reddy. J., in Writ Petition No. 5649 of 1972, striking down Clauses (a) and (b) of the proviso to Clause 3 (2) of the Andhra Pradesh Rice Procurement (Levy) and Restriction on Sale Order, 1967 (hereinafter referred to as the Control Order).

(2.) The facts leading to the filing of the writ appeal are these: The respondents, some of them agricultural labourers, some of them cultivators and others who had purchased paddy from cultivators, filed the writ petition questioning the restrictions imposed upon the cultivators and agricultural labourers to get paddy milled for their personal consumption. It is the case of the respondents that the Control Order has been promulgated imposing obligations only on millers and dealers in the matter of making available certain percentage of the total quantity of rice produced or manufactured by a miller at his rice-mill and that the Control Order is not intended to fetter the milling of rice for personal consumption by cultivators or agricultural labourers and that, therefore, the restrictions imposed infringe upon-their fundamental rights to have the paddy, which they produced or which they earned, milled as rice as and when necessity arises having regard to the number of members in each of the families of a cultivator or an agricultural labourers.

(3.) Our learned brother. Chinnappa Reddy, J., was in agreement with the contention advanced on behalf of the respondents viz., that the restriction imposed upon an agricultural labourers or a cultivator in the matter of getting paddy converted into rice at a mill infringe upon their fundamental rights under Article 19 (1) (f) of the Constitution.