ANIRUDDHA BOSE,J. - (1.) The complaint of the petitioner, who is holding the licence of distributorship under the West Bengal Public Distribution System (Maintenance and Control) Order, 2003 is that six dealers from her distributorship is being detagged and attached to the respondent no. 5, another distributor. Her case is that such process of detagging is taking place without giving any opportunity of hearing to her. It is also contended on behalf of the petitioner that under the applicable circular, each distributor is permitted to have a maximum of fifty dealers to his or her distributorship business, whereas in her case the number of dealers connected to her fall well below this number.
(2.) Mr. Mukherjee, learned Additional Government Pleader appearing for the State submits that the six dealers who are sought to be detagged were not originally attached to the distributorship of the writ petitioner. In the event a temporary arrangement of tagging certain number of dealers from a distributor is sought to be discontinued I do not think the writ petitioner has any vested legal right to retain such dealers with his or her business of distributorship. Such tagging takes place as a temporary measure only.
(3.) In view of this, in the present case if the dealers sought to be detagged from the petitioner's business were not originally attached to the distributorship business of the petitioner, and were tagged to her business only as a temporary measure, I do not find any error in the action of the State-Respondents. So far as fixing the number of dealers, what has been prescribed is the maximum number of dealers who can be attached to a business of distributorship but this does not create any obligation on the part of the state to allocate minimum of fifty dealers in respect of a distributor's business.;