Bombay HC dismisses challenge to 15% Foreign Liquor-III license hike, says can’t cite pandemic to get ext – Times of India

MUMBAI: Bombay high court on Tuesday held that a challenge by ‘self indulgent and self serving foreign liquor vending hotels’ to a 15 per cent hike in Foreign Liquor license fee lacked a ‘shred of merit’ and dismissed petitions filed by nine associations including Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHAR) with a cost of Rs 1 lakh each.
The high court directed the amount be paid within two weeks into the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.
The associations cited the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions to demand concessions.
The HC bench of justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar said, “We do not believe the pandemic can be cited time and again by businessmen to get extraordinary concessions. The pandemic affected everyone. All businesses suffered. No exceptional prejudice was caused to the present Petitioners.”
The bench said, “There is no legal — let alone fundamental — right established to have a FL-III license at all. It is not compulsory. Pettioners’ right to conduct business is not absolute in a time of global distress.”
“The needs of the many will always outweigh the needs of the few. The state was fully entitled to order the shut-down of petitioner’s establishments in the general public interest amidst the pandemic,” the HC held in a 24-page ruling.
The HC added, “We believe it is time to send a firm signal that the time of the court is not to be taken for granted, nor should there be any attempt to gamble on litigation. When a court’s time is squandered on frivolous matters, there will be consequences.”
The State Excise commissioner had on January 28, 2021 issued the hike notification in Foreign Liquour III license fee for 2021-22. The hotel and restaurant associations went to court and sought urgent hearing with the March 31 deadline looming on them.
Senior counsel Virag Tulzapurkar and counsel Ramesh Soni for the restaurant owners contended arbitrariness, unreasonableness and “invidious discrimination” by the government. Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni for the State citing concessions already granted during the pandemic, justified the rise, adding 90 per cent FL-III licence holder already paid the revised fees.
Of a total of 17,605 licenses, fully 16,683 licensees have paid, said the State. The rest paid 50 percent and their deadline is March 31, 2022.
The petitioners sought a six week extension of an interim stay, saying they would else be immediately in default. The HC declined the plea, saying, they “cannot claim to have been unaware of the possibility of them being in default. This is the price of unwise gambling on litigation.”
The HC slammed the associations. It said, “These petitions are, at best, worthless from start to finish and,at worst, thoroughly irresponsible.”
“We find it a submission of mind-numbing insensitivity for these foreign liquor vending hotels to put themselves on the same level as the true victims who fell to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said justices Patel and Jamdar.
“Petitions are entirely without merit. We express our gravest displeasure at the manner in which they were pressed, knowing full-well of the pressures on this Court with a massive increase in our roster caseloads,” said the HC order adding, “There are hundreds of Petitions by individuals, societies and so on pending. They have waited their turn. Their cases are now delayed by this self-indulgent and self-serving foreign liquor vending hotels, in whose petition there is not a shred of merit, and some of whose contentions border on the outrageous.”
The HC said, “Relevant material has been suppressed from the Petition, including the various concessions granted by the state government and the fact of the number of similarly placed licensees who have paid.”
Foreign Liquour sale is controlled by licenses under the Maharashtra Prohibition Act of 1949 in Form FL-III, renewable annually.
The hotels and restaurants before the HC said they paid 50 percent of the revised fees for 2021-22 and were unwilling to pay more. “There is certainly no legal or enforceable right to have a FL-III license on terms dictated by the licensee,” held the HC.
The bar and restaurant owners said the pandemic was not their fault and wanted the HC to hold that whenever there is a curtailment of liquor-vending business hours, they are entitled to compensation, irrespective of the conditions and circumstances in which those hours were curtailed. The HC said, “There is yet another fatal flaw in this argument. It assumes that there were lines of people waiting to be served foreign liquor by the Petitioners and their ilk, but the government restricted the Petitioners from going about their business.”
“It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is the stuff of fantasy,” the HC said of their argument.
The pandemic was not the fault of the government either, said the HC.
The HC order also said, “The government had a mammoth responsibility, far beyond the narrow commercial concerns of the Petitioners and their foreign liquor vending business. The Government was struggling with essential services and commodities; a class that emphatically excludes the Petitioners — even if the name of one of its vendible products is from the Gaelic translation of a Latin phrase for ‘water of life’.”