FIRM RAMGOPAL RAMASHANKER Vs. STATE OF M P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is the revision, preferred by the Dealer, against the order passed by the judicial authority under section, 6-C of the Essential Commodities Act, confirming the CollectorTs order of confiscation of seven quintals of sugar from the Dealers shop under section 6(a) ibid.

(2.) On surprise check of the present applicant firm Kirana-shop by the Food Inspector on 30-10-79, seven quintals of sugar was found stored for sale. There was no licence for the same and the storage was in excess of the quantity permissible. Hence, for breach of the provisions of the M. P. Sugar Dealers Licencing Order, 1963, the seven quintals of sugar was seized. Show-cause notice was issued to the applicant, who filed his reply to the same. The Collector, claiming to have followed the prescribed procedure in the matter of show-cause notice, ordered the confiscation of the seized sugar. Appeal was preferred against the same before the judicial authority who dismissed the same, affirming the CollectorTs order of confiscation. Hence, now the present revision.

(3.) The learned counsel for the applicant-dealer has urged, in the first place that the show-cause notice issued to the applicant-dealer, by an officer of the Collectorate and not by the Collector himself, was bad in law in the absence of any delegation of powers in this regard. It is urged in this very connection that the Collector was not competent to further delegate his own delegated powers. The notice being, thus, invalid, the whole confiscation-proceedings is vitiated, deserving to be quashed. It is, next, urged that the seized bags of sugar having not been produced before the Collector as enjoined by section 6(a) of the Act, confiscation proceedings were liable to be quashed on this ground as well. It has also been canvassed that there being no material on record to establish expediencyTT, the order of confiscation could not have been passed without any specific reasons in this regard. Furthermore, in the absence of any opportunity afforded to the application for personal hearing, confiscation as ordered was illegal. In the same strain, it has been argued that there was no justification for confiscating the whole seven quintals of sugar instead of confiscating the quantity of sugar in excess of the permissible quantity. Lastly, it has been pressed that the order of confiscation, as passed by the Collector, was without any application of mind on his pad and without any proof or any material, evidencing the applicants mens-rea.