PACHAN LADHA Vs. MUNICIPAL COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition filed against the Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay, praying that he be ordered forthwith to grant a license on the terms and conditions usual and proper, authorising the petitioner to carry on, or be allowed to carry on, upon his premises in Bombay the trade or operation of melting vegetable oil.

(2.) The petitioner had been carrying on business in Bombay prior to March, 1933, and held a license from the respondent, which contained inter alia condition 4A, which ran as follows :- Ghee or butter, or other animal fat, whether unmixed or mixed with vegetable oil or with other substance shall not be kept on the premises. The license so granted expired on March 31, 1933. The respondent thereafter refused to renew licenses in Bombay for melting vegetable oil and it is alleged that among others he refused to renew the license of the petitioner also. On July 19, 1933, a complaint was filed under the directions of the respondent charging one Kheraj Ubhaiya with contravening the provisions of Secs.394 and 479 of the City of Bombay Municipal Act and contending that thereby an offence was committed under Section 471 of the Act. The complaint was that he had infringed condition 4A of the license by keeping some ghee or butter on the premises in respect of which the license was granted to him. On November 7, 1933, the complaint was heard by the Presidency Magistrate, Third Court, and the accused's statement was recorded. The accused contended that as ghee was allowed to be kept up to four hundred-weights without a license he had kept the same on the premises. The learned Magistrate acquitted the accused on December 19, 1933. From the record annexed to the petitioner's affidavit in rejoinder I do not find the reasons, if any, recorded by the learned Magistrate for that order.

(3.) After that order was made, it is alleged that prosecutions were launched against various persons (members of the association of which the petitioner is the leader) under the Prevention of Adulteration Act, 1925. One of the cases, which appears to have been treated as a test case, was brought in revision application No. 115 of 1934 to the High Court, and as in that case it was found that vegetable tawda was asked for and supplied, there was no question of conviction under that Act, and the conviction was quashed. After that decision was given, on February 19, 1935, the respondent issued a general circular intimating that he had decided to prohibit the melting of vegetable oil in the City of Bombay, and there was a general refusal to issue licenses to melt vegetable oil. On June 15, 1935, the present petition was filed. It appears that the respondent then took legal advice and intimated to the petitioner that he did not propose generally to refuse licenses, but was prepared to consider individual applications for license on their own merits. Prosecutions launched under the respondent's directions on the ground that certain traders were carrying on business of melting vegetable oil without a license were dropped, presumably because those parties were carrying on the business after the general refusal to issue licenses was intimated to them. On August 29, 1935, the respondent, through his attorneys, informed the petitioner that the prosecutions launched as aforesaid would be withdrawn and he would consider each application for a license to melt vegetable oil on its merits. After considering the petitioner's application in that way he refused to issue a license to the petitioner. The petition, therefore, is pressed to a hearing.