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Arrive Safe Society of Chandigarh v. The Union Territory of Chandigarh & Anr.

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2017 INSC 609Decided 11 Jul 2017
Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 10243 of 2017
Chief Justice J.S. Khehar · Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice L. Nageswara Rao

Background

In an earlier 2016 judgment (State of Tamil Nadu vs K. Balu), the Supreme Court had banned liquor shops along or visible from national and state highways to curb drunken driving. The Chandigarh Administration later reclassified several of its internal "V1/V2/V3" city roads from "state highways" to "major district roads," and the petitioner NGO challenged this before the Punjab and Haryana High Court as an attempt to get around the K. Balu ruling; the High Court rejected the challenge. The NGO then approached the Supreme Court under Article 136.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court had already dismissed the petition on 11 July 2017 and gave its reasons in this order. It held that the K. Balu directions were meant to target liquor sales along highways that connect cities, towns and villages, not roads that merely provide internal connectivity within a city, and that Chandigarh's reclassification left the actual National Highway No. 21 and the inter-state Madhya Marg untouched as highways, so the reclassification did not violate or circumvent the Court's earlier order. The Court clarified that its K.Balu directions do not prohibit liquor establishments within municipal areas generally, and issued this clarification to avoid repeated litigation on the point. Finding no merit in the petition, the Court dismissed the SLP and disposed of the pending intervention application.

Lesson Learnt

A government cannot be said to be defying a Supreme Court order simply by administratively reclassifying internal roads for maintenance/funding purposes, so long as the actual highways targeted by the Court's directions remain unaffected: courts will look at the substance and purpose of their own directions, not just technical road-naming changes.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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