HC upholds Andhra dry law

HYDERABAD, May 6: Clearing hurdles for the relaxation of 28-month-old dry law in the State, the Andhra Pradesh High Court today upheld the ...

HYDERABAD, May 6: Clearing hurdles for the relaxation of 28-month-old dry law in the State, the Andhra Pradesh High Court today upheld the Prohibition (Amendment) Act of 1997 and dismissed all the writ petitions challenging the government move.

In a unanimous judgement, a five-member constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Prabha Shankar Mishra ruled that the wisdom of the legislature cannot be questioned by courts as long as the laws enacted by it were in accordance with the Constitution.

Justice Syed Shah Mohammad Quadri, Justice Y Bhaskar Rao, Justice S Parvatha Rao and Justice P Venkatarama Reddy were the others on the bench, which heard a batch of writ petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Prohibition (amendment) Act on the ground that the Bill was a “colourable” piece of legislation.

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AP Sampoorna Madhya Nishedha Samthi president, Malladi Subbamma, NTR-TDP MLA, Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu and a group of licence holders of erstwhile liquor shops were among those who filed the writ petitions.

On behalf of the bench, Justice Mishra read out the 67-page judgement. Though counsels for the petitioners sought leave of the court to go in for an appeal to the Supreme Court, the bench refused on the ground that “the present judgement itself was based on the verdicts of the apex court” and no substantial point was involved in it.

With the verdict of the court, the decks have been cleared for the sale of Indian made foreign liquor in the State. Though the State Assembly passed a Bill on March 26 relaxing total prohibition by exempting such liqour from its purview, it could not be implemented due to the legal hurdles.