The right to life conferred by Art. 21 includes the right to livelihood, and deprivation of livelihood would amount to deprivation of life.

( 1 ) THESE petitions raise an interesting point touching the Constitutional guarantee to the petitioners enshrined under Art. 21 of the Constitution of India.

( 2 ) IT is not in dispute that the petitioners are eking out their livelihood by guiding the visitors to the Mysore Palace which, a few years ago, belonged exclusively to late Maharaja of Mysore. It transpires that after his death, certain changes have taken place as regards the management of the Palace. Certain portions of the Palace are still private property of the late Maharaja and his heirs and certain portions have been taken over by the State Government. But all the same the fact remains that these petitioners were acting as private guides to the visitors who visited Mysore for sight seeing.

( 3 ) THE grievance of the petitioners is that by an executive order which is produced at Annexure-'e' in the writ petition, they have been restrained from functioning as Tourists guides to the Palace and that order vide Annexure-'d' is without authority of law and violative of the protection conferred under Art. 21 of the Constitution of India. The learned counsel Mr. Subramanya Jois relied on the decision of the Supreme Court reported in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, AIR 1986 SC 180 in support of heir case.

( 4 ) IT is not in dispute that these petitioners were functioning as tourists guides for many years and their source of livelihood depended on this job. But all of a sudden, they have been prohibited from entering the Palace premises and acting as guides on the ground that the services they were rendering to the tourists were not satisfactory; that they were ill-equipped for the job in which they were engaged; that their knowledge of history, culture and Archaeology of the erstwhile princely State was inadequate and thus they were misleading the tourists and by such conduct they were not advancing the cause of tourists who visited the Palace.

( 5 ) TO put it shortly, they were more of a hindrance to the tourists who wanted to visit the Palace to know all about it. Therefore the Committee constituted for the purpose of taking care of the interest of the Palace known as 'palace Advisory Committee' thought it fit to appoint official guides who had the requisite knowledge of the ancient history of Mysore State. According to the Committee, official guides were better suited than the petitioners for discharging the duties of tourist guides.

( 6 ) THE State Government relies on its executive power under Art. 162 of Constitution to make the impugned order. The learned Government Pleader has produced the proceedings of Government of Karnataka in G. O. No. DPAR 30 PSR 78, Bangalore, dated 28-10-1978 for sustaining the validity of the impugned order. Under this Government order, the Palace Advisory Committee is entrusted with the responsibility of making proper arrangements to allow the public to see the Palace under such conditions as to timing, rates, etc. , as may be fixed by Government from time to time.

( 7 ) ASSUMING that this Government order enables the Palace Advisory Committee to deal with tourist guides who are petitioners herein, the point for consideration is whether that executive order under Art. 162 of the Constitution could be traced to any entry in List II or List III which would enable the Government to make Law pertaining to tourism. That seems to be the crux of the problem in this case. Learned Government Advocate relied on entries Nos. 35 and 40 in Lists II and III respectively in order to trace the power of the Government under Art. 162 of the Constitution for sustaining the impugned order.

( 8 ) I will take up entry 35 in List II first. Entry 35 pertains to 'works, lands and buildings vested in or in the possession of the State'. Mr. Devadas contended that this entry enables the State Government to issue executive instructions as a portion of the Palace has vested in the Government or in the possession of the State G