Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.

( 1 ) WHAT are we about? A raging rain of writ petitions by hundreds of merchants of intoxicants hit by a recently amended rule declaring a break of two dry days in every wet week for licensed liquor shops and other institutions of inebriation in the private sector, puts in issue the constitutionality of S. 59 (f) (v) and Rule 37 of the Punjab Excise Act and Liquor Licence (Second Amendment) Rules, (hereinafter, for short, the Act and the Rules ). The tragic irony of the legal plea is that Arts. 14 and 19 of the very Constitution, which, in Art. 47, makes it a fundamental obligation of the State to bring about prohibition of intoxicating drinks, is pressed into service to thwart the States half-hearted prohibitionist gesture. Of course, it is on the cards that the end may be good but the means may be bad, constitutionally speaking. And there is a mystique about legalese beyond the laymans ken.

( 2 ) TO set the record straight, we must state, right here, that no frontal attack is made on the power of the State to regulate any trade (even a trade where the turnover turns on tempting the customer to take reeling rolling trips into the realm of the jocose, belli