The main legal point established in the judgment is that the decision to allot the Pre-Processing Unit to SEAI was not arbitrary or unreasonable, and the petitioners approached the court with an ulterior motive and suppressed material facts regarding their membership and termination from the association.

JUDGMENT :

B.R. SARANGI, J.

Both the above noted writ petitions, having been filed by two different companies claiming similar relief, have been heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

2. Magnum Sea Foods Limited (petitioner no.1 in WP(C) No.7645 of 2016) is a company engaged in the business of fishing, processing and supply/export of sea food products. It is also engaged in aquaculture and distribution of imported shrimp feed, including feed financing to the farmers. Petitioner no.2 is its Director. The petitioners seek to assail the decisions taken for allotment of Pre-Processing Unit at Dhamra Port, Bhadrak, Orissa vide letters of the Director of Fisheries, Odisha dated 03.10.2015 and 18.12.2015 in Annexures-2 and 3 respectively and consequential execution of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and agreement in Annexure-4 dated 08.01.2016 and handing over the said Pre-Processing Unit in favour of opposite partyno.4, the Sea Food Exporters Association of India (SEAI) vide letter dated 28.03.2016 (Annexure-8) and further seek for direction to go for a fresh tender/competitive bid for allotment of nine Pre-Processing Units.

M/s Papermoon Implex Pvt. Ltd. has filed W.P.(C) No. 7801 of 2016 seeking to set aside the allotment/settlement of nine Pre-Processing Centres/Facilities at Dhamara Port in favour of opposite party no.4 as well as consequential handing over of Pre- Processing Centres vide letter dated 28.03.2016 (Annexure-3) and also the Memorandum of Understanding dated 08.01.2016 (Annexure-4). The petitioner also claims for settlement/allotment of the above nine Pre-Processing Centres/Facilities by following suitable competitive bidding process.

3. The factual matrix of the case in hand is that Dhamra Port is a major fishing centre surrounded with large number of aquaculture projects. Sea Food Exporters Association of India, a company licensed under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 bearing registration no.2301 of 1970 having its registered office at Kochi, Kerala is a non-profit oriented voluntary association constituted among the Seafood Exporters of India with an object which includes the development of the Seafood Industry in India. It has a membership of 343 exporters over the country and has 33 members in Odisha. The association does not have any share capital and the finance for the activities of the association is augmented through the contribution from members contributions and donations. Apart from Odisha, other regional offices of the association are located at Gujurat, Maharastra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.

4. Opposite party no.4, the association has been playing a very constructive role in advising the State Government in terms of policy decision and implementation for the seafood export sector. The nature of seafood, i.e., fish and shrimp is highly perishable and after procuring them from the sea, they require immediate pre-processing to prevent waste and damage, and increase their sustenance for the purpose of export to far off countries. The pre-processing activity covers cleaning, weighment of raw shrimp and fishes, be-heading, peeling, ice-storing and packing for dispatch to processing and freezing units. These sea food items were subjected to high transaction costs on account of non-availability of pre- processing facilities in landing centres (where the fish and shrimp are unloaded after procuring them from sea) as well as wastage and export reject due to lack of proper icing, and decomposition on account of transportation time. Fishermen, shrimp farmers as well as exporters were compelled to bear these losses, as there was no pre-processing centre in landing centres in the State of Odisha and all the pre-processing was carried out in processing plants of exporters mostly located in Bhubaneswar, Khurda and centres at Digha Port in the State of West Bengal, which is about 60 kilometers from the Dhamara Port. With the objective of increase of