The Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949
GS PAPER II: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.
Context: The Gujarat Prohibition Act, 1949 is being challenged before the Gujarat High Court, more than seven decades after it came into effect as the Bombay Prohibition Act. The court is to give its verdict soon on the maintainability of the petitions.
What is the origin of the prohibition law in western India and what was the rationale?
- The first hint at the prohibition of liquor was through the Bombay Abkari Act, 1878.
- This Act dealt with levying of duties on intoxicants, among other things and aspects of prohibition via amendments made in 1939 and 1947.
- Gujarat adopted the prohibition policy since 1960 and subsequently chose to enforce it with greater rigidity, but also made processes easier for foreign tourists and visitors to get liquor permits.
- In 2011, it renamed the Act as Gujarat Prohibition Act, objective as stated was “committed to the ideals and principles of Mahatma Gandhi and firmly intends to eradicate the menace of drinking liquor.”
What are the main grounds raised against prohibition of liquor and in favour of prohibition?
- Two key grounds have been taken up by the petitioners, that of the right of privacy, which has been held as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court in several judgments since 2017, and a second ground of manifest arbitrariness.
- The second ground has been especially highlighted while challenging sections pertaining to grant of health permits and temporary permits to out-of-state tourists on the basis that there is no intelligible differences in the classes thus being created by the state on who gets to drink and who does not and violates the Right to Equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.
- Any invasion by the state in an individual’s right to choice of food and beverage amounts to an unreasonable restriction and destroys the individual’s decisional and bodily autonomy.
- Touching upon the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of constitutionalism, the petitioners also submit that sometimes a change in the law precedes societal change “and is even intended to stimulate it,” and sometimes, a change in the law is the result in the social reality.
- The law must take cognizance of the changing society and march in consonance with the developing concepts,.
- Punishments under Sections 65 and 66, which entail penalty for import, export, manufacture, use, possession, transportation, sale and purchase of intoxicant substances, have also been sought to be deleted by the petitioners for being “excessive and disproportionate.”
What has come out in the arguments before the Gujarat HC so far?
- According to the state, since the Supreme Court has already upheld the Act broadly barring a few sections in 1951 in the judgment of State of Bombay and another versus FN Balsara, a fresh challenge on new grounds can only be heard before the SC, and not the Gujarat HC.
- The Act was upheld, as part of criminal trial and secondly, the new grounds on which the fresh challenge to the Act is being brought forth, especially with regard to right to privacy, was not available as a right in 1951 and hence could not have been looked at by the SC at the time.
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