The main legal point established in the judgment is the authority of the State respondents to review and revise the Excise Policy and undertake a denovo exercise to identify the locations for continuing or opening of retail vends in accordance with any such policy as may be adopted.

1. These eleven writ petitions relate to licences for retail sale of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), popularly termed as JKEL-2 license, and I wish to commence this judgment recording my conviction about the universal truth that gross loss of unimaginable magnitude in intoxicants overweighs the little benefits in them, and that there cannot be any good in something that covers minds, induces ruin in the biological beings and economy of a people, and reduces most of the consumers to abject penury.

2. In four of these petitions - OWP nos.822/2005, 826/2005, 827/2005 & 835/2005 - the petitioners challenge communications dated 14.12.2005, styled as ‘notice for cancellation of temporary licence’ addressed to them by the Excise Commissioner; in the other four writ petitions - OWP nos. 802/2005, 817/2005, 972/2006 and 137/2010 - mostly, the very same petitioners seek, inter alia, regularisation of the temporary licenses issued in their favour by the competent authority by draw of lots after they were subjected to the procedure formulated by the respondents; in writ petition, OWP no.326/2006, the petitioner has challenged Government order no.668-STS of 2005 dated 30.12.2005 insofar as the same directs opening of sub-vends at Palma Mendhar, Gujroo, Nagrota, and, at the same time, has raised his grievance against grant of licenses in favour of the private respondents 3 to 5 therein for sale of liquor as a sub-vendees and prayed or issue of command to the respondents to allot the sub-vends in his favour; in OWP no.536/2005, the petitioner therein is aggrieved of an order issued by Excise Commissioner debarring the petitioner - a women of 45 years of age - from obtaining the off-license for retail sale of IMFL; in OWP no.524/2005, the petitioner is aggrieved of selection of respondents 3 for allotment of license in his favour and of placement of respondent no.4 in the waitlist. In all these petitions, the petitioners have also prayed for other and/or consequential reliefs.

3. I heard learned counsel for the parties and considered the matter.

4. The grievance of the petitioners in these writ petitions, barring OWP no.524/2005, OWP no.536/2005 and OWP no.326/2006, mostly seems to be surrounding the legality or otherwise of the action of the official respondents to cancel the temporary licenses and/or notice dated 14.12.2005 issued by the Excise Commissioner in his capacity as the Licensing Authority, but there is something more to be dealt with, in that in the lead case, OWP no.822/2005, private respondents 4 to 53 have been impleaded as such in terms of orders dated 03.06.2011 and 18.08.2011 passed in various CMPs moved by the these respondents in that behalf after they were allowed to do so by the Supreme Court. The matter, therefore, calls for a resume of its genesis of the controversy and of the circumstances in which the above private respondents had been allowed to seek impleadment in these writ petitions as also of their case. The backdrop of facts of the matter is elaborately drawn by a Division Bench of this Court in its judgment in State of J&K v Vikas Jandial, 2005(2) JKJ 451. In fact, private respondents 4 to 53 impleaded in OWP no.822/2005 had gone to the Supreme Court feeling aggrieved of the judgment of the Division Bench of this Court in the aforesaid case. The petitioners in OWP no.822/2005 have also stated these facts in their writ petition. Therefore, I feel that narration of some of these background facts from the said judgment herein becomes imperative, and I lift such facts from the aforesaid judgment and proceed to reproduce them hereunder.

5. The trade of liquor and intoxicating drugs in the State is governed by the Jammu and Kashmir Excise Act, 1958 and the Rules, known as J&K Liquor Licence & Sales Rules, 1984. Earlier, there was a dual system adopted by the State to regulate the trade of liquor: the I