MOOT COURT PROBLEM 7

Jharkhand is full of natural resources like forest, wildlife with mines and minerals but illegal mining and black marketing of coal is also common feature of this state. Government took several steps to restrict those activities in past and all those efforts were in vain. On 2010 department of coal and ministry of finance took massive initiative relating to illegal mining and selling of coals and all licenses of coal dealers were cancelled as no one can sell coal without fresh new licenses except state government within the territory of Jharkhand. Lots of coal dealers were prevented to run their trade relating to selling and distribution of coal and kerosene and their depots were sealed and raw materials were seized. Then after constant pressure from business sector, the state legislature passed a statute ‘the Special Court (Trial of cases on Selling & Distribution of Coal) Act, 2010 (Jharkhand Act No 29 of 2010)’ to resolve the disputes relating to cancelation of licenses and winding up of private sale of coals in market. Total four special courts were established under the said statute at Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad and Bokaro and all the trials related to seizure and banning of existing coal business and issuance of new trade licenses. Apart from those many civil suits in the nature of declaration and injunction were also instituted against dept of coal and licensing officer of PDS and control officer of essential commodity dept. Many individual coal dealers filed the cases before the special courts and during the pendency of suits and proceedings, the government was changed. After the formation of new legislative assembly, the Special Courts Act, 2010 was repealed through the Coal and Kerosene Selling and Distribution Act, 2011 (Jharkhand Act No 3 of 2011) which talks about establishment of Coal Distribution Board (CDB) at Ranchi and also says all the pending cases before any civil courts and special court will be immediately transferred to the said tribunal. Act No. 3 also bars the jurisdiction of any civil court by Section 34 and there is no provision of appeal against the decision of coal tribunal. All the cases of seizure and cancellation of licenses were justified and upheld by Board. After being aggrieved with the decision of CDB, the Bihar - Jharkhand Coal Dealers Association (Regd. No 321/ 1983) filed one revision application on jurisdictional error under section 115 of C.P.C. 1908 on December 2011 but High Court rejected the application as there was no violation of Jurisdictional norms. On April 2012, the Ranchi Koila Byapari Parishad (Regd. No 123/ 1995) filed a petition on High Court under Article 227 for procedural impropriety and violation of natural justice by dept of coal but the High Court did not entertain the said petition as the High Court had no jurisdiction over the Board which was not coming under the purview of the term “tribunal” and the High Court also said there was a special statute for proceedings of issuance and cancellation of licenses relating to coal business. Again on September 2012, one coal merchant, Lal Bahadur filed one writ petition against state government for enforcement of his fundamental right as enshrined at Article 19(g) of Constitution of India but case is still pending. Now both associations jointly approached to the Supreme Court of India for quashing the governmental order and at the same time also to set aside the decision of CDB which validated the said governmental order.