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2020 ] A.D. ENTERPRISE v. UNION OF INDIA 183

of renewal of licence. The principle that a person may have spent some
amount for the purposes of development of area is no longer available in-
asmuch as it has been held by the Supreme Court in Centre for Public Interest
Litigation and Others v. Union of India and Others [Writ Petition No. (Civil)
No. 423 of 2010, decided 2-2-2011] that State largesse are not to be confined
to a few person, and certainly not on the rule of ‘first-cum-first-serve’. The
right to be granted State largesse on the principle of ‘first-cum-first-serve’ is
an arbitrary exercise of powers. The State resources should be allowed to be
exploited subject to environmental concerns by all those persons who are
eligible in an open competition and that there should be open invitation of
offer by competitive bidding for the amount to be paid to the State Gov-
ernment for prospecting the area. The Supreme Court observed that “every
action/decision of the State and/or its agencies/instrumentalities to give
largesse or confer benefit must be founded on a sound, transparent, dis-
cernible and well-defined policy, which shall be made known to the public
by publication in the Official Gazette and other recognised modes of public-
ity and such policy must be implemented/executed by adopting a non-
discriminatory and non-arbitrary method irrespective of the class or catego-
ry of persons proposed to be benefited by the policy. The distribution of
largesse like allotment of land, grant of quota, permit licence, etc. by the
State and its agencies/instrumentalities should always be done in a fair and
equitable manner.”
18. In Pawan Bhatia (supra), the petitioner claimed a writ of mandamus
directing an inquiry into the functioning of the Department of Town and Coun-
try Planning, Haryana, whereby the licences and/or the change of land use had
been granted in an arbitrary manner and for illegal consideration. A Division
Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, speaking through Hemant Gupta,
J. (As His Lordship then was), while criticizing the grant of license on ‘first-come-
first-serve’ basis, held as under :
“26. The licences have been granted on the basis of first come first served
basis. The principle of first come first served basis has been commented ad-
versely in Centre for Public Interest Litigation and others v. Union of India and
Others, (2012) 3 SCC 1. The Court examined inter alia the following ques-
tions :-
“(i) Whether the Government has the right to alienate, transfer or
distribute natural resources/national assets otherwise than by
following a fair and transparent method consistent with the
fundamentals of the equality clause enshrined in the Constitu-
tion?
xxx xxx xxx
(ii) Whether the policy of first-come-first-served followed by DoT
for grant of licences is ultra vires the provisions of Article 14 of
the Constitution and whether the said policy was arbitrarily
changed by the Minister of Communications and Information
Technology (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Minister of Com-
munications and Information Technology’), without consult-
ing TRAI, with a view to favour some of the applicants?”
27. The Court answered the said questions when it held to the following
effect :-
“94. There is a fundamental flaw in the first-come-first-served pol-

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