Central Warehousing Corporation vs. Adani Ports Special Economic Zone Ltd. (APSEZL)
Background
Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), a central government statutory body, had sub-leased 34 acres of land at Mundra Port from (what became) Adani Ports Special Economic Zone Ltd. (APSEZL) since 2004 to run grain-storage godowns. After the area was later notified as a Special Economic Zone in 2006, APSEZL in 2017 threatened to stop CWC's warehousing activities on the ground that CWC was not SEZ-compliant, prompting CWC to file two separate writ petitions in the Gujarat High Court: one challenging APSEZL's obstruction, another challenging the Ministry of Commerce's refusal to exclude the land from the SEZ. A Division Bench of the High Court, hearing an intra-court appeal, bypassed the pending Single Judge writ petitions and itself issued detailed directions requiring CWC to either become SEZ-compliant or vacate the land in favour of a relocated warehouse, prompting CWC's appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held the High Court's Division Bench had overstepped by deciding, and imposing elaborate operational directions on, matters that were properly the subject of two pending writ petitions still to be heard on their merits by a Single Judge: the Division Bench should instead have simply directed the Single Judge to decide those petitions. It also flagged as troubling that two arms of the Union Government (the Ministry of Commerce & Industry and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution) had taken flatly contradictory positions on whether CWC's land could be excluded from the SEZ, holding that "the Government shall speak only in one voice" and directing that a copy of the judgment be sent to the Attorney General to help resolve such inter-ministerial conflicts. The Court set aside the High Court's judgment and remitted both writ petitions to the Single Judge for a fresh decision on merits within six months, while keeping an earlier interim arrangement in place meanwhile and leaving the door open for an amicable settlement between CWC and APSEZL.
Lesson Learnt
Courts must decide disputes through the proper procedural forum: an appellate bench should not pre-empt a matter still pending before the court of first instance by issuing its own substantive directions; and government departments cannot bind citizens to conflicting positions taken by different ministries on the same question.