The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday refused to strike down public sector oil marketing companies’ Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) distributor selection guidelines which do not prohibit members of a same family from submitting individual applications thereby increasing their chances of getting selected for distributorship through a draw of lots.
Justice M. Venugopal dismissed a writ petition filed by an unsuccessful applicant S. Suman Kumar and held that the guidelines were neither arbitrary nor in violation of Articles 14 (equality before law),16 (equality of opportunity in matters of public employment) and 19(1)(g) (right to practice any profession, occupation, trade or business) of the Constitution.
He recorded the stand of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that restraining members of a family from making individual applications would amount to an irrational restriction and actually violated the right of individual family members to make separate applications. “The applications are made by individuals, not families,” senior panel counsel for the Centre, N.S. Ponnaiah, argued.
The Ministry further pointed out that as per the guidelines, the spouse of every successful applicant automatically became a co-owner of the distributorship concern and therefore, there was no chance of spouses holding multiple dealerships. It also claimed that the oil companies were following a transparent selection procedure to avoid bias.
On his part, senior counsel M. Vallinayagam, appearing for the oil companies — Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation — contended that the petitioner was not legally entitled to challenge the guidelines after having participated in the selection process by agreeing to adhere to the provisions of the same guidelines.
He said that “in case of selection of an applicant for one location, all other members of his family would stand disqualified even if they are selected for different locations and redraw would be conducted among other eligible applicants. Therefore, it is incorrect to state that distributorships in several locations had been given to members of a same family.”
