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 of Chief Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Biren Vaishnav said the court holds the petitions as ‘maintainable and be heard and decided on merits,’ and kept them for final hearing on October 12.
The HC, thereby, rejected preliminary objections raised by the state government regarding the maintainability of the petitions.
Advocate General Kamal Trivedi hinted before the HC that the government may decide to approach the Supreme Court against the order.
The government had maintained that it is not permissible for a 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. The Supreme Court had upheld the Act in its judgment in 1951.
In his submission, Trivedi had said a law which has been made valid by the Supreme Court today can be held invalid tomorrow, but the apex court is the right forum to decide the same and not the Gujarat High Court.
The petitioners, on the other hand, had 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.
The batch of petitions have challenged the constitutional validity of sections 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.
One of the petitions argued that 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."
"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," said a plea filed by one Rajiv Patel and two others.
The HC had, on June 23, reserved its order on the maintainability of a batch of petitions challenging the provisions of the state's liquor prohibition law as contrary to the citizen's rights to privacy, life and personal liberty as enshrined in the Constitution.
