HC admits petitions against Gujarat Prohibition Act as ‘maintainable’
A division bench comprising chief justice Vikram Nath and Justice Biren Vaishnav said the court held the petitions as “maintainable and be heard and decided on merits,” as it rejected the state government’s objections to the same.
The Gujarat high court on Monday held as maintainable a batch of petitions challenging the provisions of Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949, which bans the manufacture, sale and consumption of liquor in the state.
A division bench comprising chief justice Vikram Nath and Justice Biren Vaishnav said the court held the petitions as “maintainable and be heard and decided on merits,” as it rejected the state government’s objections to the same.
The final hearing was initially posted for September 20 but was postponed to October 12 after advocate general Kamal Trivedi sought more time for the state to explore the option of approaching the Supreme Court.
“If at all the government is thinking of testing it before a higher court, it needs some accommodation,” Trivedi said.
To this, the chief justice asserted, “Who is stopping you from that? That is your right”.
The bench had earlier reserved its order on the preliminary question of maintainability on June 23. Pointing out that the Supreme Court had upheld the Act in its 1952 judgment, Trivedi had argued that a law validated by the top court could be held invalid, “but for that purpose, the forum is the Supreme Court and not this court”.
“It is not permissible for (high) court to examine the validity of any law or any new law or additional grounds when it has been upheld by the apex court in the past,” Trivedi said.
The petitioners, however, argued that the matter should be taken up on merits, as the provisions challenged in the pleas are materially different from what they were in 1951 as they have been amended over the years. They added that the right to privacy was not recognized as a fundamental right in 1951 when the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the provisions in the prohibition law.
The batch of petitions have challenged the constitutional validity of sections section 12, 13 (total prohibition on manufacture, purchase, import, transportation, export, sale, possession, use and consumption of liquor), 24-1B, 65 of the Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949, and sought them to be declared as ultra vires Article 246 of the Constitution.
The provisions are “arbitrary, irrational, unfair, unreasonable, and discriminatory...and despite prohibition being in place for more than six decades, a steady supply of liquor continues to be available through an underground network of bootleggers, organised criminal gangs and corrupt officials”, the petitioners who were represented by senior advocates such as Mihir Thakore, Mihir Joshi, Devan Parikh and Saurabh Soparkar said.
“With expanding interpretation of the right to life, personal liberty and privacy, as contained in Article 21 of the Constitution, a citizen has a right to choose how he lives, so long as he is not a nuisance to the society. The state cannot dictate what he will eat and what he will drink,” one of the pleas said.
At one point of time during the earlier hearing in June, Trivedi had said: “This concept of right to privacy is not like a bull in a china shop. It is subject to reasonable restrictions based on social environment; otherwise tomorrow, somebody will say you should not harass me if I am taking drugs, psychotropic substances within my four walls,” he said.
It was also pointed out that the people of Gujarat “are extremely happy with the prohibition law”.