Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.:- This heavy bunch of writ petitions impeaching the validity of a tax on foreign liquor raises a few familiar legal riddles. A rupee per bottle sold within every municipal town or city is the impugned levy, meant, according to the Punjab Government, to serve the twin purposes of replenishing the resources of municipal bodies reduced by house tax exemptions and of weaning drinkers from overly consuming foreign liquor as a prohibitionist gesture. To pick the pocket of every spirituous bibber of the higher brackets by a tiny tax may be but a feeble homage to Art. 47 of the Constitution, and to finance welfare projects with this tainted tax may be queer Gandhiana. The will to enforce dry sobriety in society and to abolish massive human squalour by fleecing the fat few, is made of sterner stuff, maybe. But matters of means and ends, of policy and morality, are largely for the legislature and validity is the province of the court. We let slip the observation only because, from a certain angle, these dual grounds make odd companions and add to the credibility gap, although our focus is solely on the legality of the levy.

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