1. Mahe, part of the Union Territory of Pondicherry, is a small town, having access by land only through the Kerala State. It is a Pondicherry town landlocked in the Kerala State. Mahe does not manufacture liquor. Liquor has therefore to be transported from Pondicherry through Kerala State to Mahe or it has to be imported from other States to Mahe via Kerala. Kerala is thus a transit route for bringing liquor to Mahe. The petitioners are dealers in liquor, licenced by the Pondicherry State to carry on wholesale trade in liquor in Mahe. Necessarily they have to import liquor from the States of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamilnadu etc. or transport it from Pondicherry State itself. They obtain the necessary licence/permit for importing or transporting liquor to Mahe. But as the liquor has to be carried in transit through the Kerala State, the State Government insisted on transit permits under the Kerala Abkari Act. The petitioners used to obtain these permits without any difficulty, but recently, in some cases, applications for the permits were either kept pending or were arbitrarily rejected. The result was that the petitioners were not a