Supreme Court to examine validity of Section 58 of Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 read with specific Rules

In The State of Bihar & Ors. vs. Shankar Baranwal (2025), Supreme Court's bench of Chief Justice B.R.Gavai. Justice K. Vinod Chandran and Justice N.V. Anjaria passed an order dated August 9, 2025. It issued notice as it is all set to to examine validity of Section 58 of Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 read with Rules 12 A and 12 B of the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Rules, 2021. Its order reads:"Until further orders, there shall be stay insofar as the direction issued by the High Court to make the payment by the valuer is concerned. The case arose out of impugned 7-pag long final judgment and order dated April 16, 2025 in Shankar Baranwal vs. The State of Bihar & Ors. (2025) passed by the Patna High Court's Division Bench of Justices P. B. Bajanthri and S. B. Pd. Singh. 

The High Court's judgement was authored by Justice Bajanthri. The petitioner had prayed for issuance of writ in the nature of certiorari or any other appropriate writ, order or direction for quashing the order dated January 17, 2022 passed in Excise Revision Case No. 282/2021 by Additional Chief Secretary, Bihar, Patna whereby and whereunder the order dated September 10, 2021, passed in Excise Appeal Case No. 523/2021 by the Commissioner, Excise, Patna and order dated July 17, 2021, passed in Confiscation Case NO. 118/2021 by the District Magistrate, Kaimur at Bhabua, which arose out of Durgawati P.S. Case No. 74/2020 have been confirmed and Safari car bearing Registration No. UP-60V-0160 of the petitioner was confiscated and also for giving direction to release the aforesaid vehicle of the petitioner. 

Justice Bajanthri observed: "It is to be noted not even reference to value of the vehicle purchased and depreciation year wise with reference to any policy or the Government or General Insurance Company. In the absence of assessment and randomly evaluation of vehicle in wholesale is highly deprecated. Irrespective of movable and immovable property cannot be valued with the naked eye by the bureaucrats of the State of Bihar and proceed to undertake auction and causing the state exchequer under loss and for the concerned person. In almost each and every case Motor Vehicle Inspectors are evaluating valuation of the vehicle in wholesale without there being individual assessment of the vehicle or property with reference to evaluation like date of purchase and value of what would be value as on the date of seizure of the vehicle and on the date of auction. 5. Having regard to the facts that one liter of liquor has been seized from the subject matter of vehicle, petitioner shall not be penalized in seizing vehicle and auctioning the vehicle at throw away price and realised amount remitting arbitrary and illegal." 

In the light of these observations, the High Court concluded: "the confiscation order, appellate authority order and revision authority order stands modified to the above extent, while exercising extra ordinary jurisdiction under article 226 of constitution", in order to avoid further legal proceedings.