Bombay High Court Lashes Out At Hoteliers for Seeking Reduction of Liquor License Fees Citing COVID; Dismisses Plea with One Lakh Each Cost

Post published:March 31, 2022
Post category:Bombay High Court / Daily Judgments
Reading time:6 mins read

Bombay High Court Lashes Out At Hoteliers for Seeking Reduction of Liquor License Fees Citing COVID; Dismisses Plea with One Lakh Each Cost

Case: Hotel & Restaurant Association (Western India) and Ors. v. Commissioner, State Excise and Ors. with connected matters

Coram: Justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar

Case No.: Writ Petition No. 2873 Of 2021

Court Observation: “The 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. 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.”

“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,”

“Petitioners cannot have it both ways: they demand a reduction (and would complain if there is none) and then they take the reduction given as a baseline to protest a reversion to the pre-Covid lockdown levels. The comparison has to be of the rates between 2021–2022 and 2019–2020. Those rates are exactly the same. The intervening periods saw a reduction as a one-off concession precisely to mitigate business losses — the very demand the Petitioners make,”

“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 that this is the stuff of fantasy.”

“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’. 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,”

Hotel-Restaurant-Association-Western-India-and-Ors.-v.-Commissioner-State-Excise-and-Ors.-with-connected-matters-31-March-4 Download

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