ORDER :

T.Raja, D.Bharatha Chakravarthy, JJ.

Prayer: Writ Petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India praying for a Writ of Mandamus directing the respondents to pay the sugar cane arrears payable to the farmers those who supplied sugar cane to the Arooran Sugar Limited and also to discharge the loan fraudulently borrowed by the Arooran Sugar Limited in the name of farmers from the banks.

A. Prelude :

OTHER LANGUAGE

This is a converse case where the small and marginal sugarcane farmers, who supplied sugarcane as per the mandate of the State to the fourth respondent company, namely, ThiruArooran Sugars Limited, during the years 2013 to 2017, are made to be praying with folded hands, not demanding any favour, but for the price due of the sugarcane supplied by them.

B. The PIL & Its Maintainability :

2. This public interest litigation is filed by one P.Ayyakannu, the State President of an agriculturists' association. Objections to the maintainability of the public interest litigation have been raised by both the Liquidator of Thiru Arooran Sugars Limited and also the new entity, which is going to run the said sugar mill, namely, The Kals Distilleries Private Limited, the fourth and fifth respondents herein. Their preliminary objection is that when the affected farmers themselves have taken part in the Committee of Creditors meeting and other proceedings before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Chennai and had accepted for 57% of the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP), contrary to their will the public interest litigation is unnecessarily filed by the writ petitioner. In response thereof, when this Court raised the said query to the petitioner and directed him to get affidavits from the affected farmers, the petitioner has filed statements duly signed by large number of farmers along with their Membership number, Village and the balance amount due to them.

2.1. Secondly, we had also gone through the order of the NCLT in this regard, which we are going to deal with in the later part of the judgment. It is seen that out of 14,000 farmers who were directed to vote, when all of them assembled, there was agitation on behalf of these farmers leading to some of them tearing and throwing away ballot papers and no voting took place. Thereafter, it was decided on behalf of the Committee not to assemble farmers, but to separately deal with them. Even with such an attempt, they were able to get ballots only from about 1086 farmers, which is not even 10% and only by taking into account the total amount due and the volume of debt of the fourth respondent company, namely, ThiruArooran Sugars Limited, their objections were steamrolled and the order of the NCLT was passed accepting the compromise proposal. Therefore, we are unable to accept the submission on behalf of the respondents 4 and 5 as if all the farmers have participated and accepted the verdict of the NCLT and the public interest litigation cannot be entertained. On the other hand, we find that the affected farmers are small and marginal farmers languishing in debt after supplying sugarcane and without the wherewithal to individually take legal recourse themselves and therefore, there is overwhelming public interest to entertain this public interest litigation.

C. Facts in Brief :

3. The brief facts which can be culled out from the pleadings before this Court on behalf of the petitioner as well as the respondents are as follows:

3.1. Thiru Arooran Sugars Limited had two units situated at Thirumandangudi, Thanjavur District and A.Chittoor, Cuddalore District. Both the units had been allotted the mandatory areas, thereby statutorily forcing the farmers of their territorial limits to supply their sugarcane only to the said sugar mill units by virtue of grant of command area under Order 6 of the Sugarcane (Control) Order, 1966. Both the units had stopped crushing operation from