Hyderabad: While granting liberty to revenue authorities to probe the alleged irregularities committed by some fair price shop dealers in Nizamabad district if they desired to do so, the Hyderabad High Court on Friday made it clear that the inquiry shall be in accordance with law by giving an opportunity to the dealers to submit explanations. A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice U. Durga Prasad Rao was disposing of writ appeals by the state government challenging the order of a single judge setting aside the cancellation of the dealerships.
Senior counsel V. Ravikiran Rao, appearing for the dealers, said that the Nizamabad RDO suspended the dealerships of the petitioners based on a report of the deputy tahsildar. The deputy tahsildar said that during verification of the list of SKS reference numbers with reference to Aadhaar data, he found that some of the SKS references were placed with “B” series instead of “NZU” series, the unique code allotted to Nizamabad urban.
The deputy tahsildar submitted a list of 10 fair price shops dealers where the “B” series SKS were found and said that they indulged in malpractice by getting other SKS references allotted to their shops by taking the help of computer operators with knowledge of the Electronic Public Distribution System site and diverting additional stocks to a dummy shop. Mr Rao contended the dealers have no access to the EPDS site and the RDO was the appointing authority of the dealers and cannot delegate his powers to the deputy tahsildar.
The single judge noted that sequence of events show that there was some suspicion with regard to the irregular activities conducted by the dealers. The single judge granted liberty to the RDO to conduct an inquiry pursuant. The state government in its appeal contended that the single judge did not consider the aspect that the RDO took action after issuing notices to the dealers seeking explanation. While confirming the order of the single judge, the bench disposed of the appeals.
