Ashirvad Enterprises v. The Union of India & Ors.

places having different problems. One of the facets of Article 14 of the Constitution is treating unequals equally. Equally true is treating equals unequally. Here what the petitioner submits is that Railway authorities have looked only to their side of the problem and have not really taken into account the difficulties of traders like the petitioner at night. They are unable to get people to unload the wagons. At night, they are unable to get trucks in sufficient numbers to remove the goods from the goods shed. The goods shed both at Laheriasarai and Saharsa do not have adequate covered space to store cement bags even if they were to be unloaded from the wagons to avoid demurrage charges. This apart, the question of safety and security of personnel working at the shed and outside at the dead of the night has not been considered. The counter affidavit does not at all address to any one of these problems. Having considered the matter, in my view, though the policy itself is not wrong, arbitrary or illegal in any manner, its implementation lacks fairness as is apparent, discretion was left to the General Managers of various Zonal Railways to implement the policy. This itself implies that there had to be an objective assessment 4 stationwise before the policy could be implemented. From the counter affidavit, there does not seem to be any exercise undertaken for objective satisfaction for implementation of the policy. The stand of the Railways appears that I am concerned about my affairs and you look your affairs. Unfortunately, that is a myopic view. Railway is not an individual private commercial organization. It is a State instrumentality. It is governed by Article-14 of the Constitution. All its actions are subject to rule and norm of non-arbitrariness and non-discriminatory apart from being reasonable and fair. I regret that the decision to extend this policy to Laheriasarai and Saharsa stations does not appear to have preceded on basis of any rational objective assessment of the practical difficulties and the facts emanating at those two stations. I am, therefore, constrained to hold that extension of the policy to the two stations aforesaid cannot be sustained as valid in law. Railway is restrained from enforcing the said policy of round the clock working in those stations unless a proper assessment, as indicate above, is made and facilities provided and ensure accordingly. Practical difficulties have to be kept in mind because we are not working on paper but on ground and once we are working on ground, ground realities have to be considered. With the aforesaid observation and direction, the writ application stands allowed. M.E.H./ (Navaniti Prasad Singh)