SAT PAL GUPTA & ANR. versus STATE OF HARYANA & ANR.

Citation: [1982] 3 S.C.R. 196 · Decided: 05-02-1982 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: Y.V. CHANDRACHUD · Disposal: Dismissed

Judgment (excerpt)

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196 
SAT PAL GUPTA & ANR. 
v. 
STATE OF HARYANA & ANR. 
February s; 1982 
(Y.V. CHANDRACHUD, C.J. AND A.D.KOSHAL, J.] 
Essential Commodities Act, 1955-"Foodstuff"-Meaning of-Rice bran used 
to feed poultry a11d cattle-Whelher essential commodity within the mea11ing of the 
Act. 
Sub-clause (i) of section 2(a) of the Essential Commodities Act 1955 defines 
an '
1essential commodity" to mean "cattle fodder including oilcakes and other 
coilcentrates" and by sub--clause (v) an "essential commodity" me:lns "food~ 
stuffs, including edible oih1eeds and oils." Clause 3 of the Haryana Rice Bran 
(Distribution and Price) Control Order 1967 provides that no dealer or owner of 
a ri!=C mill shall sen or offer to sell or supply rice bran save against a permit 
granted by certain officers of the State Government. 
By a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution, the appellants 
impugned the validity of clause 3 of the Control Order on the ground that rice 
bran is not an essential commodity and that for this reason power under section 
3 could not be exercised for the purpose of regulating its sale or supply. The 
High Court rejected the appellants' writ petition. 
Dismissing the appeal, 
HELD : Rice bran being a "foodstuff" wil~in the meaning of section 2(a) 
~ 
(v) of the Act, it is an essential coinmodity and therefore, the-power conferred by 
section 3 can be used to regulate its production, sale or supply. [199 Fl 
The term "foodstuffs" means food of any kind. The dictionar:Y meanings 
of "food" are not restricted to what is eaten by human beings for nourishment 
and sustenance. According to them, what one takes into the system to maintain 
life _and growth or what is taken into the body of an organism in order to sustain 
growth is food. 
[199 C-E] 
Rice bran, which is a bye-product of the husking and milling process of 
paddy, consists of the layer that lies between husk and the kernel. It is a food 
stuffWhicli is commonly used as poultry and cattle feed. Any stuff which 
is commonly used as food by the 
generality of living beings 
is food-
stuff ; it is not legitimate to restrict its ineaning to things used as food by human 
heinfis. The animal kingdom is not any the Jess important in the cosmic scheme 
tban the human empire and it is a distortion to say that it is a matter of little or 
no concern to the State whether the cattle and the ·poultiy get their due ration 
of the means of their subsistence. Cattle feed and poultry feed are feed to the 
cattle and the poultry and therefore they are foodstuffs. (198 E-H] 
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SA'tPAL v. HARYANA (Chandrachud, C.J.) 
191 
Cattle and poultry are living cOlnl)Onents of the natural environment and 
thero is no reason to exclude that which they eat or feed upon from the meaning 
of the word·''foodstuffs". If what the human beings eat is food, so is what the 
other living beings eat. "Cattle fodder" is expressly brought within the cOmpass 
of essential c;ommodities by section 2(a) (i). It would be illogical ir', in that con-
text, rice bran is excluded from the purview of essential commodities on the 
ground that it is eaten by the poultry and not by Homo Sapitns. (199 B-C] 
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No. 1099(N) of 
1972. 
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated 
the 12th October, 1971 of the Punjab aqd Haryana High Court in 
Civil Writ No. 3400 of 1971. 
B.P .. Maheshwari arid Suresh Sethi for the Petitioner. 
K.G. Bhagat and M.N. Shroff for the Respondents. 
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by 
CHANDRACHUD, C.J. The appellants, in this appeal by special 
leave, are dealers in rice, paddy and rice ~Jan. They also have an 
associate rice milling and husking plant which is run under the name 
and style of Jagdamba Rice Mills, Traori. 
Section 3 of the Essential Commodities Act, 10 -of 1955, 
empowers the Central Government, under the circumstances stated 
in that section, to issue notified orders providing for the regulation 
of production, supply and distribution of any essential commodity, 
Under Section 5, the Central Governmcint can delegate its powers 
to a State Govetnment or an officer or authority subordinate to it. 
In exercise of that power, the Central Government issued a noti-
fication on July 24, 1967 delegating to the State Governments the 
power conferred upon· it by Section 3 of the Act. 
In exercise of 
such del'egated power, Respondent I, the State of Haryana, promul-
gated the Hary

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