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 e

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