A five judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday held that there can be no conflict between the minimum prices of sugarcane set by a state and the Centre if the price set by the former is higher than that set by the latter.
The constitutional Bench comprising of Justices Arun Mishra, Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran, MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose delivered the judgement via video conferencing
The Bench thus decided that there is no need to refer this question of conflict to a larger bench.
The bench while giving the above decision had upheld the SC 5 judge bench verdict in UP Cooperative Cane Unions Federation v. West UP Sugar Mills Association.
The present plea that was filed by the Western Uttar Pradesh Sugar Mills Association revolved around the question whether the state government or the State Cane Commissioner could to fix a minimum price for sugarcane, when a similar price was already set by a central legislation.
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The petitioners through their lawyer Senior Advocate Jayant Bhushan had submitted that even if the UP government or the cane commissioner had powers under the UP Sugarcane (Regulation of Supply & Purchase) Act 1953 to fix a price, such legislation were repugnant before central legislations like the Essential Commodities Act and the Sugarcane Control Order, 1966.
The petitioners had further added that the power to regulate the distribution, sale or purchase of cane under Section 16 of the UP-Sugarcane Act did not include the power to fix the price of the product.
The petitioner cited Ch. Tika Ramji and others v. The State of Uttar Pradesh and others to substantiate their point. which analyzed the legislative history of laws relating to pricing of sugarcane. In this case both Central and state governments had arrived at the specific conclusion that the power given to the state government to fix minimum price of sugarcane under in U.P. Act 1 of 1938 would have to be deleted from the UP Sugarcane Act of 1953, since that power clashed with the power being exercised by the Centre under Clause 3 of the Sugar and Gur Control Order, 1950.
The petitioner contended that there could not be two minimum prices, one fixed by the Centre and the other fixed by the state government.
It argued, “Once the centre has fixed a minimum price, any other price whether minimum price or State advised price would be repugnant to the centre’s decision and the centre’s power and such power of the State Government would therefore have to yield to the Central legislation under Article 254 of the Constitution of India, both legislations being under the concurrent list.”
One of the main issues raised by the petitioner was that this case needed to be referred to a larger bench of seven judges as there was a direct conflict between the Constitution Bench judgments in Tika Ramji and UP Cooperative Cane Unions.
While upholding the verdict in UP Cooperative Cane Unions, the court held that there was no need to refer the case to a higher bench.
