TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2005 (8) TMI 660
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....troleum products. Factual controversy lies in a narrow compass and is as follows: In both writ petitions challenge was to the selection of the appellants in Civil Appeal nos.8737/2003 and 8739/2003 for retail dealership of Indian Oil Corporation Limited (in short 'IOC') at different places. The appellants and writ-petitioners in the writ petitions before the High Court were applicants for dealership and distributionship of various petroleum products. Challenge to the selection was on the ground that the selected persons were not eligible for selection on several grounds. One of the grounds highlighted was that their relatives already hold letters of intent for dealership or distributionship of MS/HSD/Kerosene/LDO/LPG of another or same pu....
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.... the ground that it had raised several other points to contend that the selected person was ineligible but the High Court did not refer to them. Originally, selected persons and IOC are appellants in other Civil Appeals. Learned counsel for the appellants submitted that the view of the High Court is clearly untenable. In clear and unambiguous terms the advertisement indicated persons who are covered. It was not permissible for the High Court to add persons to the list of the relatives. The writpetitioners before the High Court, the respondents herein supported the judgment of the High Court. Their stand is that intentions have to be seen, monopoly has to be discouraged and while dealing with State or public sector undertakings largesse a n....
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....at attention should be paid to what has been said as also to what has not been said. As a consequence, a construction which requires for its support, addition or substitution of words or which results in rejection of words as meaningless has to be avoided. As observed in Crawford v. Spooner (1846 (6) Moore PC 1), Courts, cannot aid the Legislatures' defective phrasing of an Act, we cannot add or mend, and by construction make up deficiencies which are left there. (See The State of Gujarat and Ors. v. Dilipbhai Nathjibhai Patel and Anr. (JT 1998 (2) SC 253). It is contrary to all rules of construction to read words into an Act unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. (See Stock v. Frank Jones (Tiptan) Ltd. (1978 1 All ER 948 (HL). Rules o....
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....to amend, modify or repeal it, if deemed necessary. (See Commissioner of Sales Tax, M.P. v. Popular Trading Company, Ujjain (2000 (5) SCC 511). The legislative casus omissus cannot be supplied by judicial interpretative process. Two principles of construction \026 one relating to casus omissus and the other in regard to reading the statute as a whole \026 appear to be well settled. Under the first principle a casus omissus cannot be supplied by the Court except in the case of clear necessity and when reason for it is found in the four corners of the statute itself but at the same time a casus omissus should not be readily inferred and for that purpose all the parts of a statute or section must be construed together and every clause of a se....
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....Fenton v. Hampton (1858) XI Moore, P.C. 347. A casus omissus ought not to be created by interpretation, save in some case of strong necessity. Where, however, a casus omissus does really occur, either through the inadvertence of the legislature, or on the principle quod semel aut bis existit proetereunt legislators, the rule is that the particular case, thus left unprovided for, must be disposed of according to the law as it existed before such statute - Casus omissus et oblivioni datus dispositioni communis juris relinquitur; "a casus omissus," observed Buller, J. in Jones v. Smart (1 T.R. 52), "can in no case be supplied by a court of law, for that would be to make laws." The principles were examined in detail in Maulavi Hussein Haji Abra....