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 petitio