FERTILIZER CORPORATION KAMGAR UNION (REGD.), SINDRI AND OTHERS v. UNION OF INDIA AND OTHERS (2)

Citation: [1981] 2 S.C.R. 52

Court: Supreme Court of India

Bench: Y.V. CHANDRACHUD, P.N. BHAGWATI, V.R. KRISHNA IYER, S. MURTAZA FAZAL ALI, A.D. KOSHAL

Case summary

· But, in an appropriate case, it may become necessary in the changing awareness of legal rights and social obligations to take a broader view of the question of locus to initiate a proceeding, be it under Article 226 or under Article 32 of the Constitution....

Judgment text

FERTILIZER CORPORATION KAMGAR UNION (REGD. ), SINDRI AND OTHERS v. UNION OF INDIA AND OTHERS November 13, 1980 [Y. V. CHANDRACHUD, C. J. , P. N. BHAGWATI, V. R. KRISHNA IYER, S. MURTAZA FAZAL ALI AND A. D. KOSHAL, JJ. ] .... ,. Constitution of India-Article 19(1)(g)-Sale of redundant/retired pla_'lfS & equipment--Occupation of an industrial l'. 'Orker-Whet! ter affected by sucfl -C sale-Article 14-Whether violated-Article 43A-Wrongs con1mitted by management in public sector whether can be remedied-Article 31-Access to Justice-Public Property dissipated by sale-When and by who1n can the sale be set aside. The petitioners (v. lorkers) challenged the legality of the sale of certain plants and equipment of the Sindri Fertilizer Factory, whereby the highest •D terider submitted by respondent No. 4 \Vas accepted by the Tender Committee and approved by the Board of Directors. The petitioners, amongst others, ccu.

~ tended that (i) that the decision to sell the plants and equipment of the Factcry was taken without rolling for any report; ;(ii) the original tender of Rs. 7. ~ crores was unaccountably reduced to Rs. 4. 25 crores; (iii) the price of the plants and equipment, which was ultimately realised in the sale was manipulated V. 'ith ulterior purposes; (iv) the decision to restrict fresh offers, in respect of ! E the reduced equipment, to the tenderers who had submitted tenders for more · than Rs. 4 crores was unfair and arbitrary; (v) the said decision resulted in huge loss to the public exchequer and (vi) the sale had jeopardised the employment of 11000 odd \Yorkers who faced retrenchment as a result of the iale.

On behalf of petitioners 3 and 4 it was further contended that the sa1e will deprive them of their fundamental right under Article 19(1) (g) to carry on their occupation as industrial workers and that the sale is in violation of the provisions of Article 14 of the Constitution being arbitrary and unfair. The respondents raised a preliminary objection to the maintainability of the writ petition on the ground that the petitioners have no locus standi and that the impugned sale did not violate any Of the fundamental rights of the petition~! '$. Dismissing the petition : HELD (By the Court) The petitioners' right under Art. 19(1) (g) to carry on their occupation as industrial workers was not affected by the sale, nor was their fundamental right, if any, under Article 14 of the Constitution violated. [60 Al (Per Chandrochud, CJ. , Faznl Ali & Kosbal, JJ. ) 1. The violation of a fundamental right is the sine qua non cf the exerc! se of the right conferred by Article 32. FERTILIZER CORPN. V.

UNION 53 The jurisdiction conferred on the Supreme Court by Article 32 is an important and integral part of the basic structure of the· Constitution because it is meaningless to confer fundamental rights without providing an effective remedy for their enforcement, if and when they are violated. A right without a remedy is a legal conundrum of a most grotesque kind. [59 E·Fl 2. Whereas the right guaranteed by Article 32 can be exercised for ! he enforcement of fundamental rights only, the right conferred by Article 226 can be exercised not only for the enforcement of fundamental rights but for any ether purpose. [59 E] 3(i).

There is no substance in the grievance that the petitioners' right under Article 19(1)(g) is violated or is in the imminent danger of being violated by the impugned sale, since not only did the sale not affect the employment of the workers employed in the Factory, but those of them who were rendered surplus from time to time on account of the closure of the plants were absorbed in alternate employment in the same complex. [60 C, F·G] (ii) The right of petirioners 3 and 4 and of the other workers is not, in any manner, affected by the impugned sale. The right to pursue a calling or to carry on an occupation is not the same thing as the right to work in particular post under a contract of employment. If the workers are retrenched consequent upon and on account of the sale, it will be open to them, to pursue their rights and remedies under the Industrial Laws.

The closure of an esta· blishment in which a workman is for the time being employed does not by itself infringe his fundamental right to carry on an occupation which is guaran· teed by Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. [60 G-H, 61 A] 4. Article 19(1)(g) confers a broad and general right which is available to all persons to do work of any particular kind and of their choice. It does not confer the right to hold a particular job or to occupy a particular post of one's choice. Even under Article 311 of the Constitution, the right to continue in ~ervice falls with the abolition of the. post in which the person is working. The workers in the instant case can no more complain of the infringement of their fundamental right under Article 19{l){g) than can a Government servant complain of the termination of his employment on the abolition of his post. The_ choice end freedom of the workers to work as industrial workers is not affected by the sale.

The sale may at the highest affect their locum, but it does not affect their locus, to work as industrial workers. [61 B-D] .. 5. In the instant case, it is quite difficult to hold that the decision to sell the plants and equipment of the Factory was arbitrary, unreasonable or nUJla fide. The real drive of the petition is against the decision of the Board to sell the plants and equipment. It is that decision which is stated to furnish the cause to complain of the violation of the right conferred by Article 14, fairness, justness and reasonableness being its implicit assumptions. [64 D-F] 6. As far as possible, sales of public property, when the intention is to get the best price, ought to take place publicly. The vendors are not necessarily bound to accept the highest or any other offer, but the· public at least gets the satisfaction that the Government has put all its cards on the table.

One can- • not exclude the possibility here that a better price might have been realised in a fresh public auction but such possibilities cannot vitiate the sale or justify the allegation of mala fides. [64 G-H, 65 A-BJ 7. It cannot be held that the petitioners' rights, if any, under Article 14 are violated, in view of the fact that neither the decision to sell nor the . sale proceedings were unreasonable, unjust or unfair. But if and when a sale of public property is found to be vitiated by arbitrariness of n1ala fides, it would be n~cessary to consider the larger question as to \Vho has the right to complain of it. [65 C, D-EJ 8. (i) The maintainability of a writ petition which is correlated to the existence and violation of a fundamental right is not always to be confused with the locus to bring a proceeding under Article 32. These two matters often mingle and coalesce with the result that it becomes difficult to consider them in water-tight compartments.

The question whether a person has the locus to ~ file a proceedings depends mostly and often on whether he possesses a legal right and that right is violated. · But, in an appropriate case, it may become necessary in the changing awareness of legal rights and social obligations to take a broader view of the question of locus to initiate a proceeding, be it under Article 226 or under Article 32 of the Constitution. [65 E-G] (ii) The Court might not have refused relief to the workers if it had found that the sale was unjust, unfair or mala fide. If a public property is dissipated, it would require a strong argument to convince the Court that representative segments of the public or at least a section of the public which is directly interested and affected would have no right to complain of the infraction of public duties and obligations. Public enterprises are owned by the people and those who run them are accountable to the people.

The accountability of the public sector ro the Parliament is ineffective because the parliamentary control of public enterprises is "diffuse and haphazard". [65 G-H, 66 A] (Per Bhagwati and Krishna. Iyer, JJ. concurring) 1. Public law, as part of the panorama of the developmental process, mu5t possess the specific techniques of public sector control within \\'ell-defined para· meters which \Yill anathematise administration by court writ and interdict public officials handling public resources in disregard of normatice essentials and constitutional fundan1entals. In a society in which the State had thru<>t upon it the imperative of effectuating massive transformation of economy and social structure the demands upon the legal order to inhibit administrative eviis and engineer developmental progress are enormous, though novel. [68 E & 69 A-BJ 2.

It is important to underscore the vital departure from rhe pattern of judicial review in the Anglo-American legal environment because the demands nf development obligated by Part IV compel creative extensions to control jurisprudence in many fields, including business administrative lav:. contract law, penal law, fiscal low and the like. [69 C-Dl 3. Judicial interference with the Admini5tration cannot be meticulous. The court cannot usurp or abdicate, and the parameters of judicial review must be clearly defined and never exceeded. If the Directorate of a Governmeht company has acted fair1y, e\·en if it has faltered in its wisdom, the court cannot, a - American legal enviromnent because the demands of development obtigated by Part IV compel creative extensions to control jurisprudence in many fields, including business administrative law, contract law, penal law, fiscal law and the like. Robert Siedmann, dealing with the law of economic development in Sub-Sal!

aran Africa has dealt with the maintenance of legality in a developmental setting with focus on stability and change and the evdlution of new nonns of constitutional and adminislrative law. He rightly stresses what applies to India as well : "If there are to be some reasonable norms for administrative behaviour in Africa, the formulation of codes of administrative law is desirable. But such codes are not selfenforcing; without institutional devices to support them, they becom~ meaningless. "(') He continues to make certain ob5ervations on the enforcement on the regime of legality and their importance for the Indian scene : "If the tone of public life is sufficiently honest and farrminded, formal norms are relatively unneeded. That is not the position in Africa; on the contrary, there is a notable lack of restraints, upon the exercise; of state power. This betrays itself most blatantly in the widespread corruption that seems (I) Berman, Justice in the U. S. S. R. IOI (rev. ed.

1963) quoted in Wisconsin Law H, Review, Vol. 1966 : 999 at p. 1020. (2) Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 1966 : 999 at p. 1064. to exist, especially in West Africa. When corruption permeates the entire fabric of government, legality is the firSt sufferer, for state power is exercised on grounds unrelated to its nominal purposes. In English-speaking Africa, the devices for the enforcement of the few standards of administrative probity that exist are in the common-law tradition. In some cases there are internal administrative appeals. Resort to the courts for relief is theoretically available if au ascertainable ~orrn has been violated. Relief can be sought in a civil action brought by the extreme cases, in a criminal action brought by the director of public prosecutions. The civil remedies for administrative wrongdoing thus depend upon the action of individual citizens. In such an action, the individual is pitted against the. State--always an unequal contest.

The individual d0es not have even the few procedural devices that the common law imports intd criminal actions to try to redress the balance. At his own expense, he must challenge the vast panoply of . State power with all its resources in personnel, money, and legal talent, by a civil action for a declaratory judgment or for an extraordinary remedy-injunction, writ of mandamus, or writ of prohibi- . tion. Aside from the manifold technical insufficiencies of these forms of action, the financial impediments to such an action are staggering. As a result of these impediments, in the United States, where almost the sole institutional protection against administrative error or arbitrariness is such an action, usually only great corporations or individuals who are supported by large voluntary associations have been able to carry through litigation. To rely upon such individual actions as the primary means of policing · administrative action in Africa is to rely upon what is nonexistent.

" (1) A pragmatic approach to social justice compels ns. to interpret constitutional provisions, including those like Arts. 32 and 226, with view to see that effective policing of the corridors of power is carried out by the court until other ombudsman airangements-a problem with which Parliament has been wrestling for too longemerges. I have dwelt at a little length on this policy aspect and the court process because the learned Attorney General challenged the petitioner's locus sta11di either qua worker or qita citizen to question (I) Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 1966 : 999 . •t p. 1065. . _,,. _ -,.. ,. --..................... FERTILIZER CORPN. v. UNION (Krishna Iyer, !. ) . 71 in court the wrong doings of the public sector·although he maintained that what had been . done by the Corporation was both bona fide and correct. We certainly agree that judicial interference with the Adlmnistration cannot be meticulous in our Montesquien system of separation of powers.

The conrt cannot usurp or abdicate, and the parameters ol I judicial review must be clearly defined and never exceeded. If the Directorate of a Government company has acted fairly, even if it has faltered in its wisdom, the court cannot, as a super-auditor, take the Board of Directors to. task. This function is limited to testing whether the administrative action has been fair and free from the taint of unreasonableness and has substantially complied with the norms of ' procedure set for it by rul~, of public administration.. Assuming that the Government-company has acted mala fide, or has dissipated: public funds, can a common man call into question in a court the validity of the action by invocation of Arts. 32 or 226 of the Constitution.? Here, we come up on the crucial issue of access to justice and the special limitations of Art. 32 which is the passport to this Court.

We have no doubt that in a competition between courts and streets as dispenser of justice, the rule of law must win the aggrieved person for the law court and wean him from the lawless street. In E. simple terms, locus standi must be liberalised to meet the challenges of the times. Ubi just ibi remedium must be enlarged to embrace all interests of pnblio-minded citizens or organisations with serious concern for conservation of public resources and the direction and correction of public power so as to promote justice in its triune facets. Lord Scarman's warning in his Harnlyn Lectures lend strength to our y· view. : "I shall endeavour to show that . there are in the contemporary world challenges, social, political and economic, which, if the system cannot meet them, will destroy it. These challenges are not created by lawyers; they certainly cannot / be suppressed by lawyers : they have to be met either by dis- 1 carding or by adjusting the' legal system. Which is to be ? ''.

( ) Lest there should be misapprehension, we wish to keep the distinction clear between the fundamental right to enforce fundamental rights ' and the interest sufficient to claim relief under Art. 226 and even under other jurisdictions. The learned Attorney General almost (I) English Law-The New Dimension-The Hamlyn Lectures by Sir Leslie Scarman, 1974-Steve*-P· l. A agreed, uuder J)1'essure . of compelling trends in the contemporary law of procedure, that Art. 226 may probably enable the petitioner to seek relief· if the facts suggested by the court hypothetically existed. Shri A K. Sen also took up a similar position. I will put aside Art. 32 for a moment and scan the right under Art. 226. There is nothing in the provision (unlike under Art. 32) to define 'person aggrieved', 'stand- '. B ing' or 'interest' that gives access to the court to seek redress.

\ The· argument is, who are you to ask about the wrong committed or illegal act of the Corporation if you have suffered no personal injury to property, body, mind or reputation? An officious busybody picking up a stray dispute or idle peddlar of blackmail-litigation . c; through abuse of the process of the court cannot be permitted to pollute the court ins'trumen. tality, for private objectives. Public justice is always and only at the service of public good, never the servant or janitor of private interest or personal motive. Law as I concei\'e it, i~ a social auditor and this audit function can be put into action only when some one with real public interest ignites the jurisdiction. We cannot be scared by the fear that all and sundary will be litigation-happy and waste their time and money and the time of the court through false and frivolous cases.

In a society where freedoms suffer from atrophy and activism is essential for participative public justice, some risks have to be taken and more opportunities opened for the public-minded, citizen to rely on the legal process and not be repelled from it by narrow pendantry now surrounding locus standi. Schwartz and H W. R. Wade wrote in Legal Control of Govern- ; ment: 'F "Restrictive rules about standing are in general inimical to a healthy system of a administrative law. If a plaintiff with a good case is turned away, merely because be is not sufficiently affected personally, that means that some government agency is left free to violate the law, and that is contrary to the public interest. Litigants are unlikely to expend their time and money unless they have some real interest at stake. In the rare cases where they wish to sue merely out of public spirit, why should they be discouraged?

"(') They further observed : "The problem of standing, or locus standi is inherent in fl all legal systems . . . But· in the United States, perhaps (I) Professors Bernard Schwartz and H. W. R. Wade, 0. C. , in Legal Control of Government (1972), p. 291. ' ' FERTILIZER CORPN v. UNION (KrishlUI Iyer, !. ) 73 because of the constitutional basis which the subject has acquired in federal law it can be discussed as a single topic. . In Britain it is a thing of shreds and patches, made up of various differing rules which apply to various different remedies and procedures. It is a typical product of the untidy system of remedies, each with its own technicalities, whi. ch all British administrative lawyers would like to see reformed. " (I) We have no doubt that having regard to the conditions in Third World countries, Cappelletti is right in his stress on the importance of access : ' "The right of effective access to justice has emerged with the new social rights.

Indeed, it is of paramount importance among these new rights since, clearly, the enjoyment of traditional as well as new social rights. presupposes mechanisms for their effective protection. Such protection, moreover, is best assnred by a workable remedy within the framework Qf the judicial system. Effective access to justice can thus be seen as the most basic requirement-the most basic 'human right'-of a system which purports to guarantee legal rights. "(') The need for a radical approach has been undr. rscored in New Zealand by Black : ". . . today it is unreal to suggest that a person looks to the law solely to protect his interests in a narrow sense. It is necessary to do no more than read the newspapers to see the breadth of the interests that today's citizen expects the law to protect-and he expects the court where necessary to provide that protection. He is interested in results, not procedural niceties.

"(') India is an a fortiori case, especially as it suffers from the pathology of mid. Victorian concepts about cause of action. The Australian Law • Reform Commission in its discussion paper No. 4 has considered the pros and cons and strongly supported the wider basis for access to justice. Class-actions will activise the legal process where individuals cannot approach the court for many reasons. I quote from the Discussion Paper No. 4 : (') (I) Ibid. ' (2) M. Cappelletti, Rabels Z 11976) 669 at 672. (3) Black, "The Right to be Heard", New Zealand L. J. , No. 4, 1977, 66. (4) The Law Reform Commission, Discussion Paper No. 4-Access to the Court -1, Standing : Public Interest Suits, p. 4. "Widened standing rules may assist consumers in attaining relevant injunctive or declaratory relief but they do not assist in recovering losses inflicted by illegal trading practices, nor do they threaten the illegal trader where he is mot hurt, his pocketbook.

The most potent legal instrument in that regard so far devised is the modem class action, to some an 'engine of destruction', to others a mighty force for good. Consider the New York Commissioner of Consumer Affairs giving evidence before a United States Senate Committee in 1 1970. ( ) 'A federal class action law will have more impact on the market places of the nation than all the myraids of laws and ordinances against fraud and deception which are hidden away, in the statute books of the 50 States and their various sub-divisions, put together. All these laws make fraud illegal. But they have not made fraud unprofitable. Many of these laws can only be invoked by administrative agencies, whicli long ago lost their concern for the consumer and their appetite for action. A Federal class action law ...

will put the power to seek justice in court where it belongs-beyond the reach of campaign contributors, industry lobbyists, or Washington lawyers-and it will put i)ower in the hands of the consumers themselves and in the liands of their own lawyers, retained by them to represent their interests alone. ' " Public interest litigation is part of the process of participate justice and 'standing' in. Civil litigation of that pattern must have liberal reception at the judicial doorsteps. The flood-gates argument has been nailed by the Australian Law Reforms Commission : "The idle and'. whimsical plaintiff, a dilettante who ).. litigates for a lark, is a specter which haunts the legal 2 literature, not the courtroom. ( ) A major expressed ·reason for limiting standing rights is fear of a spate of actions brought by busybodies which will unduly extend the resources of the courts. No argument is easier put, none more difficult to rebut.

Even if the fear be justified it does not follow that present restrictions should (1) Evidence of Mrs. Bess Myerson, Commr. of Consumer Affairs of the City of New York, before the Co)lsumer Subcommittee of the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, No. 91-48, at 172. (2) Prof. K. E. Scott : ! 'Standing in the Supreme Court : A Functional Analysis" (1973) 86. FcRTILlZER CORPN v. UNION (Krishna Iyer, J. ) 75 remain. If proper claims exist it may be necessary to provide resources for their determination. However, the issue must be considered. . . . . Over recent years successive decisions of the Uni! et! States Supreme Court have liberalised standing so as to afford a hearing to any person with a real interest in the relevant controversy. Surveying the result in 1973 Professor 1 Scott commented : ( ) 'When the floodgates of litigation are opened to some new class of controversy by a decision it is notable how rarely one can discern the flood that the dissentors feared.

Professor Scott went on to point out that the liberalised standing rules had caused no significant increase in the number of actions brought, arguing that parties will not litigate at considerable personal cost unless they have a real interest in a matter. " We agree with the conclusion of the Commission : "The moral, perhaps, applies; if the courts cannot, or will not, give relief to people who are in fact concerned about a matter then they will resort to self-held, with grave results for other persons and the rule of law. Some may reply that if there is no evidence of a great increase in numbers there is no evidence of need for enlarged standing rights. The reply would overlook two considerations. One case may have a dramatic effect on behaviour in hundreds of others; this is the whole notion of the legal 'test case'. Secondly, the mere exposure to possible action is likely to affect the behaviour of persons who presently feel themselves immune from legal control".

In the Municipal Council, Ratlam, a bench of this Court observed: • " 'It is procedural rules' as this appeal proves, 'which infuse life into substantive rights, which activate them lo make them effective ' . . . . The truth is that a few profound issues of processual jurisprudence of great strategic significance to our legal system face us and we must zero-in on them as they involve problems of access to justice for the people beyond the blinkered rules of 'standing' of British Indian vintage. If the centre of gravity of justice is to shift, as the Preamble to the Constitution manda~, from the ~di- (1) Op cit, 673. 6-1281 SCl/80 tional individualism of locus standi to the community orientation of public interest litigation, these issues must be considered. In that sense, the case before us between the Rat! am Municipality and the citizens of a ward, is a pathfinder in the field of people's involvement in the justicing process, sans which as Prof.

Sikes points the system may 'crumble under the burden of its own insensitibity'..... Our judicial system has been aptly described as follows : Admirable though it may be, (it) is at once slow and costly. It is a finished product of great beauty, but entails lin immense sacrifice or' time, nioney and talent. This 'beautiful' system is frequently a luxury; it tends to give a high quality of justice only when, for one reason or another, parties can surmount the substantial barriers which it erects to most people and ! o many types of claims. Why drive common people to public interest action ? Where Directive Principles have found statutory expression in Do's and Dont's the court will not sit idly by .... (1) After all (Australian, 16 November, 1977) was right.

We quote as a concluding thought of benign import for us :- "Under a banner 'Easier Access to Courts of Law' the Australian, 16 November 1977 declared : 'Perhaps-and it is only a perhaps-there was cirice some justification for restricting access to the courts to prevent their being bogged down in a morass of ineffectuallity. But today's better informed, better educated, more literate and more politically aware citizens should certainly not be barred from the courts by tradition. The law can no longer be a closed shop. " In the present case a worker, who, clearly, has an interest in the industry, brings this action regarding an alleged wrong-doing by the Board of Management. Article 43A of the Constitution confers, in principle, partnership status to workers in industry and we cannot, therefore, be deterred by technical considerations of corporate personality to keep out those who seek to remedy wrongs committed in the management of public sector.

Locus standi and justiciability are , sifferent issues, as I have earlier pointed out. This takes us to the (1) Municipal Council, Rat/am v. Shrl Vardhichand and Ors. -S. L. P. (Crl. ) No. 2856 of 1979-<lecided on July 29, 1980. -. i! IDilllilll"lll1•aa--llllrli 1R" - "'Irr - FERTILIZER CORPN v. UNION (Krishna. Iyer, /;) 77 question of justiciability of questions like sale of public property by public bodies. Certainly, it is not part of the judicial process to examine entrepreneurial activities to ferret out flaws. The couit i~ least equipped for such oversights. Nor, indeed, is it a function of the judges in. our constitutional scheme. We do not think: that the internal management, business activity or institutional operation of public bodies can be subjected to inspection by the Court. To do so, is incompetent and improper and, therefore, out of bounds. Nevertheless, the broad parameters of fairness in administration, bona.

(ides in action, and the fundamental rules of reasouable management of public business, if breached, will become justiciable. If a citizen is no more than a wayfarer or officious intervener without any iuterest or concern beyond what belongs to any one of the 660 million people of this country, the door of the court will not be ajar for him. But he belongs to an organisation which has special interest in the subject matter, if he has some concern deeper than that of a busybody, he cannot be told off at the gates, although whether the issue raised by him is justiciable may still remain to be considered. I, therefore, take the view that the present petition would clearly have 1 been permissible under Article 226. ( ) The learned Attorney General drew our atten\ion to Art. 32 and cited decisions to support his contention that only the petitioner's fundamental rights could be agitated under that Article.

As the rulings now stand, he is right, although the question still survives as to whether a worker's fundamental right under Art. 14 is not uffecl:ed when arbitrary action of the enterprise in which he is employed has an impact on his well-being. The democratisation of judicial remedies which is the thrust of our ··-<. separate opinion, induces us to conclude with a quote : (2) It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich and left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression and left it the staff of hon:esty and the shield of innocence. (! ) see judgments of Krishna Iyer, J. in [1975] 2 SCC 702 and [1976] 2 SCC 0 291 ; (2) Henry Peter Brougham : Nieman Reports, April 1956.

A Having sought to illumine the half-lit zone of access jurisprudence, ·we wish to make it clear that we are not dealing with the likely appli· cation Art. 19(1) (f) or of Art. 14 which have been raised in the present case because the learned Chief Justice has held that on the merits the action of the Corporation is above board. The question which we reserve may well be considered when an appropriate B occasion arises. N. K. A. Petition dismissed.