Gujarat High Court: A.Y. Kogje, J., allowed and disposed of a petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India aggrieved by the impugned order passed by the District Magistrate followed by the order passed by the Sub-divisional Magistrate challenging the non-grant of firearm license for crop protection.
The Counsel for the petitioner Niral R. Mehta and Jayneel S. Parikh had submitted that the petitioner was an agriculturist and possessed three parcels of agriculture land in the village and that the land of the petitioner was located near the forest area and therefore, wild animals frequently entered the agriculture field of the petitioner and destroyed crops. They also submitted that when the opinions were called for from the local authorities and all the authorities’ positive opinions were received and still the application of the petitioner was rejected. The counsel for the respondents Nidhi Vyas submitted that when the authorities had found that there was a wire fencing scheme of the Government and the petitioner could also take benefit of “Jataka Machine”, this petition should not have been entertained.
The Court while allowing the petition quashed and set aside the order passed earlier stating that after perusal of the documents it was found that the land of the petitioner was situated near to forest area and was frequently, destroyed by wild animals, also the authorities had not assigned any cogent reasons to reject the application of the petitioner and they had not taken into consideration the positive opinions given by the three different authorities. The Court also considered that the petitioner was not involved in any offence /criminal activities. The Court while disposing of the petition asked the petitioner to make a fresh application with necessary documents to the License Issuing Authority within period of four weeks. [Devkaranbhai Somlabhai Vala v. DM, 2020 SCC OnLine Guj 148, decided on 06-02-2020]