The Indian Express ·
‘Quarter century gone in litigation’: Bombay High Court grants 91-year-old Rs 2.5 lakh
The Bombay High Court has quashed the Minister’s order in a decades-old licence dispute and awarded Rs 2.5 lakh costs to Suryakant Khaladkar.
The Bombay High Court has granted Rs 2.5 lakh in costs to a 91-year-old man and said he had knocked “the doors of this Court thrice” and each time, after going through three rounds before the Collector, the Commissioner and the Minister, that resulted in the “past quarter century of his life being mired in litigation”. The dispute over a liquor licence was said to have “travelled through three rounds of litigation before this court across nearly four decades”.
The issue arose after an FL-II liquor licence (vendor licence issued by state excise departments) initially granted to one Balkrishna Wadkar in 1973 was converted into a 90:10 partnership with Suryakant Khaladkar and his father in 1979. Wadkar’s death in 1985 triggered decades of litigation between Khaladkar and his widow, Shobha. In 2002, the High Court ruled that the partnership and licence had legally expired with Wadkar’s death and required a fresh application from Shobha and Khaladkar. However, in 2016 the High Court noted that the previous directions were not complied with.
The judgment remained unchallenged and was embraced by all parties, including the State. Both Khaladkar and Shobha filed fresh applications before the Collector later. Despite these directions, in 2017 the Collector retransferred the licence to Shobha, only for the excise commissioner in 2022 to divide the rights according to their original 90:10 ratio. Shobha challenged the order before the Minister for Excise, who restored the Collector’s order on October 26, 2023. Khaladkar challenged it by way of the present petition.