ADMINISTRATOR, KRISHI UPAJ MANDI, CHHINDWARA Vs. TILAKRAJ JUNEJA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN these set of appeals we are required to examine the correctness or otherwise, of the interpretation put by a Division Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court to section 19 of the Madhya Pradesh Krishi Upaj Mandi Adhiniyam, 1972 (Act No. 24 of 1973). The provision reads as follows: -

(2.) THE necessity of the same arose because the respondents herein on notices received, moved the High Court in writ petitions, questioning their liability as traders, to pay merket fee on the produce brought for sale in the market area, but not actually sold or bought. The challenge made by the respondents before the High Court mainly rested on the premise that unless the notified agricultural produce was bought or sold, the liability to pay market fee did not arise, and that even otherwise, the provision was unworkable until the price was computed which could only be discerned from the bargain of sale or purchase. They were successful before the High Court which took the view that the act of merely bringing notified agricultural produce for sale within the market area did not entitle the Market Committee to levy market fee which can only be levied when there is an actual sale or purchase in the market area. The notices issued by the Market Committee were, therefore, held as unauthorised and the impugned notices issued to the respondents were quashed.

(3.) SUB -section (2) of section 19 also land support to the above exercise when we notice therein that the market fee is obliged to be paid by the buyer of the notified agricultural produce and shall not be deducted from the price payable to the seller, provided, where the buyer of notified agricultural produce cannot be identified, all the fees shall be payable by the person who may have brought the produce for sale in the market area. The proviso goes to cover situations of clandestine sales. The bias exhibited in sub section (2) against the buyer is not easily shiftable and he is the person who is vested with the ownership thereof, on payment of price to the person who bought the agricultural produce for sale in the market area. The design of the provision under interpretation is not difficult to understand, and the High Court, though not analysing it in the manner in which we have done, has correctly arrived at the result by allowing the writ petitions. We endorse that view adding to it our own and dismiss the appeals as also the special leave petitions.