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Judgment
J. Chelameswar, C.J.—Aggrieved by a judgment dated 14th June, 2010 in W.P. (C) No. 18438 of 2010 the partially successful petitioner preferred the instant writ appeal.
The appellant is a holder of FL-3 licence under the provisions of the Kerala Abkari Act read with the Foreign Liquor Rules, 1972. The said licence authorises the holder of such a licence to serve liquor at the hotel run by the appellant. The liquor which is to be sold in such an establishment, it appears, is purchased by the appellant from the Kerala State Beverages (M&M) Corporation Limited.
Under Sub-rule (5) of Rule 35 of the Rules of the High Court of Kerala, 1971 read with Rule 159 of the said Rules, a memorandum of appeal would require to contain a synopsis containing the "dates and events chronologically arranged, points to be urged, Acts/Rules to be referred and authorities to be cited". Rule 35 of the Rules of the High Court of Kerala reads as follows:
Form of Proceedings.- (1) All petitions, Affidavits, Memoranda of appeal and other proceedings presented to the court shall be typewritten or printed on one side, fairly and legibly, on stamp paper or on white foolscap folio paper, with an outer margin of about 4 c.m. and an inner margin of about 1.5 cm. Numbers shall be expressed in figures.
(2) All main proceedings such as Writ Petitions, Writ Appeals, Contempt Petitions, Civil and Criminal Appeal Memoranda, Revision Petitions, etc., shall be presented to the Court with thick covering sheets of thick durable paper bearing protected holes at the top and bottom left hand corner one inch apart from the outer edges, placed at the top and bottom.
(3) All proceedings shall be presented in book form without folding, neatly stitched in one bunch on the left margin and the pages therein shall be consecutively numbered. In the main proceedings, the thick covering sheets at the top and bottom shall be left unstitched and shall be tied together with other papers by passing removable tags through the holes at the top and bottom left hand corners. The entire case file proceedings shall further be tied across using white tape.
(4) All main proceedings shall contain an index sheet placed immediately below the covering sheet, setting forth the brief description of the contents therein with reference to the respective page numbers. One blank sheet shall be placed below the index sheet for making further entries.
(5) A synopsis containing the dates and events chronologically arranged, points to be urged, Acts/Rules to be referred and authorities to be cited shall be filed along with all main proceedings and shall be placed below the blank sheet.
(6) Miscellaneous petitions filed along with main proceedings shall be placed immediately before the covering sheet at the bottom of the main proceedings and shall be flagged noting "I.A. No...."
(7) Miscellaneous petitions and pleadings filed in pending cases shall be flagged noting thereon "IA No...."/brief description of pleading such as "Counter by R.... Reply by R..../Statement by..."etc."
Memorandum of the instant writ appeal does not contain any information whatsoever as to what are the basic facts which provided the cause of action for the writ petition. The pleadings are wholly unsatisfactory. Obviously the learned Counsel for the appellant believes that it is the responsibility of the Judges to wade through all the papers filed to make out a case and decide very ''wisely'' in favour of the appellant. We are afraid that the law is otherwise. We have already noticed the relevant provision governing the pleadings in this Court.
Unfortunately, the memorandum of grounds does not disclose the period for which the appellant''s tax liability was determined except a bald statement at paragraph 2 that "However a best judgment assessment was made by the 2nd respondent determining a total tax liability at Rs. 33,97,779/-". Confronted with the question, the learned Counsel for the appellant submits that the details are contained in the writ petition and he is of the opinion that since what is questioned is a garnishee order passed against the appellant pursuant to the assessment, the appellant need not disclose the further details of the assessment. We are afraid that such an understanding of the nature of the pleadings is wholly inconsistent with the law or the practice. In the circumstances, we decline to exercise our jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
The writ appeal is therefore dismissed at the admission stage.