SURENDRA KUMAR; RAMESH KUMAR & ANR ; HARBANS KUMAR & ORS ; RAJIV KUMAR; GAURAV SALUJA; SUKHJINDRA SINGH; MANOJ KUMAR; SATVEER SINGH; MANI RAM; RAVINDRA SINGH Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN & OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In the above writ petitions, the petitioners are challenging the action of respondents accepting the financial instrument other than bank draft for the purpose of application fees and 10% earnest money of the license fees for considering the case of private respondents for the grant of licence under the Rajasthan Excise Act, 1954 (in short, to be called "the Act" hereinafter) and the rules framed thereunder, being Rajasthan Excise Rules, 1956 (in short, to be called "the Rules" hereinafter). All the petitioners have prayed that the application for grant of license to the private respondents for sale of poppy straw may be cancelled and the same may be awarded to the petitioners; and, further, in some of the writ petitions, it is prayed that the respondents may be directed to convene fresh lottery after rejecting all the applications of the private respondents.

(2.) For the sake of convenience, however, the facts narrated in S.B. Civil Writ Petition No.1644/2009, Surendra Kumar Vs. State of Rajasthan & Others are taken into consideration for adjudication of the controversy involved in these writ petitions.

(3.) Petitioner Surendra Kumar is a liquor contractor dealing in liquor for last 30 years and he is having both retail as well as wholesale licence for last so many years. Case set out by the petitioner is that on 10.02.2009 respondent No.2 Excise Commissioner, Udaipur invited applications for grant of licence for the retail as well as wholesale shops of poppy straw for the year 2009-2010 for various districts in the State. In the advertisement Annex.-1 issued by the respondent, there are two very important features to be noted viz., (i) application fee will be one per cent of the licence fee reserved for the shop for which the application is made and that fees was to be payable by way of demand draft which would be non-refundable, (ii) in case of any deficiency in the application fee, earnest money or documents regarding identification, the application will not be considered in the lottery procedure which was to be adopted by the respondents. As per Schedule-B appended to the application form, the licence fee, earnest fee and application fee, for the district Sriganganagar, the licence fee fixed was Rs.6,35,02,000/- and, accordingly, the corresponding application fee, being 1% of the licence fee, was Rs.6,35,020/-. There were 12 wholesale groups (in production field) and 24 wholesale/retail groups (in consumption field) for which the applications were invited and it was provided that the persons who succeeded in 24 retail groups will only be eligible to apply for 12 wholesale groups. After drawl of the lots for retail groups, lottery of wholesale groups was to be drawn on 13.03.2009. The last date for filing application for wholesale group was 12.03.2009.