B. SUBHASHAN REDDY, J.

( 1 ) THIS batch of writ petitions raises an important point for consideration as to whether a notice is necessary before bifurcating the fair-price shops held by the petitioners. The petitioners hold authorisations to run the fair-price shops and specified number of cards are attached to their respective fair-price shops. The Government has framed guidelines for creating or bifurcating fair-price shops and one of the considerations is the population being minimum of 1650 persons for one shop. The Government also formulated a policy that each and every village should have separate fair-price shop, as hitherto, there was one fair-price shop for more than one village. Another guideline is that the fair-price shop should be within a distance of 1 k. m from the residences of the cardholders. May be, there are special circumstances for consideration as to whether a separate shop to Harijan basthi in the village has to be setup. In so far as tribal areas are concerned, even if population is 1000, fair-price shop has to be set up. As already stated above, for non-tribal areas, the population is 1650 for each shop. The other prime consideration is that shop must be economically viable. All these factors which are several in number cannot be considered independently. It has to be interpreted and understood in a large sense after reading of the said guidelines together and after reconciling them. If read so, it only means that one family may comprise five persons and calculating 330 cards multiplied by 5, it comes to 1650 persons. That is guideline and we cannot say that the said guideline is either arbitrary and unreasonable. Economic viability also is a matter of policy and cannot be judged having regard to each fair-price shop dealer. Survey has been made in this regard and the first condition being that each village should have a fair-price shop even if the population of non-tribals is less than 1650, even we go to the extent of saying that even the village has got 500 population, a fair-price shop is a must, because it is salutary to have one fair-price shop for a village as the prime object and intendment of setting up fair-price shop is to have easy access to the essential commodities at controlled prices. As such, it is impracticable and also causes hardship, if one fair-price shop is set-up for group of two or three villages. As such, maintaining one fair-price shop for each village, the population has to be arrived at and even if it is just more than 1650 does not mean to say that a separate fair-price shop is necessary unless a separate locality has emerged in the village which is at a distance of more than 1 k. m. from the other residences. Same thing is applicable to tribal areas also.

( 2 ) WITH regard to economic viability, there cannot be any assurance that each fair-price shop dealer will get sufficient income for meeting his ends. The issue has to be standardised generally and not specifically taking each and every fair-price shop dealer into consideration. As such, we are of the opinion that the guidelines framed are neither arbitrary nor unreasonable.

( 3 ) THE second is the prime question viz. , with regard to the observance of Principles of Natural Justice. The question is as to whether notice is necessary before bifurcating a shop which results in taking away some cards from the existing fair-price shop dealers. Government s contention is that such a notice is not necessary for the reason that the fair-price shop dealers do not have any vested right and that it is the property of the Government. Decisions rendered in Writ Appeal No. 267/91, W. P. No. 11176/91, W. Ps. 7591 and 7597/92, W. P. 2032/94 and W. A. No. 130/92 are cited by Ms. Rohini, the learned government Pleader in support of her argument that no notice is necessary before bifurcating the shops. She also submitted that the judgments rendered by the learned single Judges in W. P. No. 2032/94 has been upheld in w. A. No. 1250/96 an

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