ANITA DAS Vs. STATE OF ORISSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) PETITIONER calls in question legality of the order passed by the Under Secretary to Government, Health and Family Welfare Department, directing cancellation of allotment in favour of the petitioner of a twenty -four hour medicine store in the campus of Upgraded Public Health Centre, Balikuda in the district of Jagat -singhpur.

(2.) THE petition has been filed in the fallowing background.

(3.) THE primary question that needs consideration is whether the cancellation as directed is defensible. The concept of natural justice has undergone a great deal of change in recent years. Rules of natural justice are not rules embodied always expressly in a statute or in rules framed thereunder. They may be implied from the nature of the duty to be performed under a statute. What particular rule of natural justice should be implied and what its context should be in a given case must depend to a great extent on the facts and circumstances of that case, the frame -work of the statute under which the enquiry is held. The old distinction between a judicial act and an administrative act has withered away. Even an administrative order which involves civil consequences must he consistent with the rules of natural justice. The expression 'civil consequences' encompasses infraction of not merely property or personal rights but of civil liberties, material deprivations, and non -pecuniary damages. In its wide umbrella comes everything that affects a citizen in his civil life.