Principles for grant of police protection to management.

(1) THE prayer in the writ petition is as follows :

". . . To issue a writ of mandamus or any other appropriate writ or order or direction directing respondents 1 and 2 to provide adequate police protection to the petitioner. (a) to remove the articles set out in the Schedules A and B mentioned in the writ petition from its engineering unit at Tiruvottiyur, Madras 600019; and (b) to provide adequate security to the other employees and customers of the petitioner for their ingress and egress to the engineering unit at Tiruvottiyur; and (c) to give protection to the vehicles entering and coming out of the engineering unit of the petitioner at Tiruvottiyur. . . "

(2) THE petitioner-company has got four units; viz. :

(1) a sugar factory at Vijayawada, which crushes about 6,000 tonnes of cane per day to manufacture sugar; (2) a cement factory at Macherla, Andhra Pradesh; (3) an engineering unit called the Central Workshop situated at Tiruvottiyur; and (4) a sugar manufacturing unit at Lakshmipuram, Andhra pradesh.

(3) THE total number of workers employed by the petitioner is roughly 4,000 and the paid up capital of the petitioner is Rs. 11 crores and the shares are being held by over 3000 shareholders. It is alleged in the affidavit that the petitioner-company has earned foreign exchange of Rs. 30 crores on account of exports and has also on hand export orders for sugar and other machineries. The petitioner-company was carrying on manufacture of sugar at its factory at Lakshmipuram, Andhra Pradesh, and by order dated January 29, 1988, the said Challapalli Sugars Ltd. was amalgamated with the petitioner-company, after the petitioner-company investigated the matter under the Sick Industrial Companies (Special Provisions) Act. It is also alleged in the affidavit that each unit is an independent unit by itself, that separate balance sheet and accounts are prepared for each of the units, that the engineering unit of petitioner-company at Tiruvottiyur, is engaged in the manufacture of sugar plants and also machineries, that the Lakshmipuram unit had placed an order with the engineering unit for expansion/modernisation of its existing plant to increase its capacity from 1250 TCD to 2500 TCD in or about February 1989, that the total cost of the order was Rs. 27. 40 crores, that the project is financed by various financial institutions, that the engineering unit had already supplied machineries, that the erection of the vital machinery, viz. , boiler is going on, that the engineering unit had manufactured almost all the parts of the said boiler and that the lower drum of the boiler and several other parts have been manufactured and are kept ready for despatch. The articles ready for despatch had been set out in Sch. A to the writ petition. It is also alleged in the affidavit that Messrs Sri Lanka Sugar Corporation of Colombo had placed an order on the petitioner-company for the supply of sugar factory machineries and equipment of two numbers, that centrifugals for its Sevenegala Sugar Development Project and the same was confirmed by the said Sri Lanka Sugar Corporation by its letter, dated June 19, 1990, that the total value of the order is over 1,60,000 US Dollars, that in accordance with the said order, the petitioner-company has to supply the items mentioned above, after manufacturing some of them and adding some bought-out items. It is further stated that the said Sugar Corporation had opened an irrevocable letter of credit on the Bank of Ceylon, that it had paid an advance of 10 per cent to the petitioner-company and the letter of credit is valid up to 28 February 1991, provided shipment of the machineries are completed on or before 30 December 1990. It is further alleged that the petitioner had undertaken the said order on pro rata basis and had completed the manufacturing/assembling of all the parts and the said items are ready for being shipped to Sri Lanka, that if the shipment is not completed within time, the petition