Customs house agent licensing requires rational competence-based safeguards; diluted, arbitrary regulations and notice were struck down.

Existing customs house agents were held to have locus standi to challenge licensing regulations because the scheme directly affected their regulated professional interests, not merely private commercial rivalry. The Court further found the Customs House Agents Licensing Regulations, 1984, and the consequential public notice invalid insofar as they introduced temporary licences for untrained entrants while diluting safeguards of competence, experience, solvency and suitability. A specialised licensing regime must rest on rational, non-arbitrary classification linked to competence and public interest; a scheme that treats materially unequal persons alike is unconstitutional. The objection based on publication in the Official Gazette was rejected, but the substantive defects in the regulatory scheme remained fatal.

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Issues: (i) whether the writ petitioners, as existing customs house agents, had locus standi to challenge the 1984 regulations; and (ii) whether the Customs House Agents Licensing Regulations, 1984, together with the public notice issued under them, were valid in law.

Issue (i): Whether the writ petitioners, as existing customs house agents, had locus standi to challenge the 1984 regulations.

Analysis: The right to invoke writ jurisdiction depends on the petitioner being a person aggrieved, but that concept is not confined to direct proprietary injury in all contexts. The regulatory scheme here affected the manner in which the profession of customs house agency was to be regulated and did not merely concern a private commercial rivalry. The petitioners were directly concerned with the statutory regime governing their licensed trade and could question its legality.

Conclusion: The petitioners had locus standi to maintain the challenge.

Issue (ii): Whether the Customs House Agents Licensing Regulations, 1984, together with the public notice issued under them, were valid in law.

Analysis: The regulations introduced temporary licences for untrained entrants, relaxed the earlier safeguards of technical competence, experience, solvency, and scrutiny of suitability, and permitted a regime that treated materially unequal persons alike. The Court held that the previous regulatory framework served the public interest by ensuring competence and control in a specialised field affecting revenue and trade, whereas the new scheme was arbitrary and unreasonable. The objection that publication in the Official Gazette was mandatory was rejected, but that did not save the regulations, since the substantive scheme itself was found to be unconstitutional and beyond proper regulatory limits. The public notice issued on the basis of those regulations also could not survive.

Conclusion: The 1984 regulations, insofar as they provided for temporary licences on the prescribed conditions, and the consequential public notice, were invalid and liable to be struck down.

Final Conclusion: The appeal succeeded and the order dismissing the writ petition was set aside, with the impugned regulations and public notice quashed.

Ratio Decidendi: A licensing regime governing a specialised trade must maintain a rational and non-arbitrary classification based on competence, experience, and suitability; where a regulation dilutes those safeguards and introduces an unreasonable and discriminatory scheme, it is liable to be struck down as unconstitutional.

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