A.M. Khanwilkar, J.

1. This writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India takes exception to the order passed by the respondent No.2 Director of Marketing dated 29th November, 2003 in appeal under Section 52 B of the Maharashtra Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, 1963 (hereinafter referred to as `the Act').

2. The said appeal was filed by the respondent No.1. The respondent No.1 is a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 and is a manufacturer of various perishable items, inter alia, such as animal feed, dressed chicken, including the subject item namely “Godrej Real Good Chicken”. The respondent No.1 dispatches “day-old-chicks to various farmers on a contract basis, who raise those chicks for 40-42 days by feeding the said chicks. The said chicks are reared under the complete supervision of respondent No.1 by the said contract farmers, who thereafter dispatch the same to the respondent No.1’s processing unit at Taloja, District Thane and at Bangalore. According to respondent No.1 it continues to be the owner of day-old-chicks right from the beginning till the time they are reared by the said contract farmers and even thereafter when they are dispatched by the said contract farmers to the respondent No.1’s processing unit at Taloja. Further, at the processing unit of respondent No.1, the said 40-42 day-old chicken are processed by dressing/culling/cleaning the same. This activity of processing chicks takes place within 24 to 48 hours from the arrival of the chicken at the respondent No.1's processing unit at Taloja. After processing the said chicken, it is then packed in transparent plastic/polythene bags with the markings -“Godrej Real Good Chicken – fresh and chilled” thereon. The processed product is of a perishable nature and is required to be kept in chilled/low temperature maintained at +4o to +5o Centigrade. The shelf life of this product is barely about 48 hours.

3. Suffice it to observe that the above referred activities take place within the jurisdiction of the petitioner Market Committee. The petitioner Market Committee, therefore, placing reliance on the vouchers issued under the signatures of the Authorised Signatory of the respondent No.1 in favour of different agencies, which reveal that the respondent No.1 was engaged in selling the processed chicken parts to the said agencies, demanded charges from the respondent No.1.

4. According to the petitioner, the respondent No.1 is engaged in activities within the jurisdiction of the Market Committee, covered by the provisions of the Act of 1963. For that reason, the respondent No.1 is obliged to comply with the obligations under the Act of 1963. The controversy raised before us in the present petition is, however, limited to the entries found in the different vouchers issued by the respondent No.1 in respect of the said product. To illustrate, the products mentioned in the said vouchers are broadly as under:

“RGC cut pieces

RGC whole

RGC minipack

RGC boneless (Big)

RGC boneless (Small)

RGC legs

RGC Lolipops RGC boneless,

RGC Kheema, etc.”

5. The argument of the Counsel for the petitioner essentially was that these vouchers are indicative of sale of the respondent No.1’s products to third party within the market area. Further, even if the respondent No.1 in the reply affidavit has asserted that the said third party is only its contract farmer or distributor, the position emerging from the entries found in the respective vouchers leave no manner of doubt that the transaction is a sale of processed product by the respondent No.1 in favour of third parties. We accept this stand of the petitioner Market Committee. The question is: whether that transaction would attract the provisions of the Act of 1963. The authority of the petitioner Market Committee to levy fees and rates of commission (adat), fructifies only if it is a case of sale and purchase of agricultural produce marketed in the market area. By virt