Bihar Yuva Adhivakta Kalyan Samiti and Others vs The State of Bihar and Others

Aftab Alam, J.—The Chief Secretary, the Finance Commissioner and the Law Secretary are present.

The Finance Commissioner presents a chart from which it appears that informations concerning sale of welfare stamps have been received from 16 out of 54 Sub-treasuries in the State. Certain amounts have also been received from 35 Sub-treasuries as the sale proceeds of the stamps but it is yet to be verified whether the entire sale proceeds along with year-wise statements of account have been received at the Finance Department.

According to the chart presented by the Finance Commissioner a sum of Rs. 1,67,97,486.85 paise was received as sale proceeds of welfare stamps during the year 1985-99 and this entire amount, according to the Finance Commissioner has been transferred to the Trustee Committee.

Mr. Jha, learned Counsel for the Petitioner stated that on a rough estimate the total sale proceeds of welfare stamps all over the State during this period should not be less than Rs. 35 crores.

Without expressing any opinion regarding the exact amount of sale proceeds during those years it can be safely presumed that the total sale proceeds would be much higher than the amount collected so far i.e. Rs. 1.67 crores and odd.

It is, thus evident that the present procedure under which the welfare stamps are being sold through an intermediary stamp vendors is not working quite satisfactorily and a very large percentage of the sale proceeds, at least for the present is going unaccounted for. It is also reported that a big source of pilferage is the sale of fake and spurious stamps by the Stamp Vendors.

From the foregoing it appears that two basic issues regarding the sale of welfare stamps are to be dealt with in this case. The first concerns the recovery of the sale proceeds of the welfare stamps sold in the past during the year 1985 to 1999. And the other is to evolve for the future a more effective procedure for the distribution, sale and collection of sale proceeds of the welfare stamps. The Chief Secretary, the Finance Commissioner and the Law Secretary assured the court of their fullest cooperation on both the issues.

As regards the matter of recovery, the Finance Commissioner stated that he would summon a meeting of all the Treasury Officers in the State and ask them to submit yearwise statements and the sale proceeds for the past years. He assured the court that when this case is next listed on the reopening of the court he would be in a position to apprise the court more fully about the development in this matter.

As regards the second issue of future sale of the welfare stamps it is the feeling of this Court that much of the irregularities can be avoided by excluding the intermediary stamp vendors and leaving the distribution, sale and collection of the sale proceeds of this stamps in the hands of the Lawyers'' Associations. The object of the Act is to create a fund for the Welfare of the Lawyers. It thus naturally follow that the management of the fund should also be left as far as possible in the hands of the Lawyers and no room should be allowed to an outside agency i.e. the intermediary stamp vendors.

It is reported to this Court that the Government had in fact taken a decision to give licence for the sale of the welfare stamps to the local Advocates'' Association and necessary instruction in this regard was also issued to all the District Magistrates. It is further reported that at some places the District Magistrate has given licence to the Local Advocates Association and that has brought about a remarkable increase in the collection of the sale proceeds of the welfare stamps but unfortunately in most of the places the concerned District Magistrates were simply sitting over the matter and the requisite licences were not issued to the local Advocates Associations. In those places the pilferage of the sale proceeds of the Welfare stamps was going on unabated.

The Chief Secretary and the Finance Secretary assured the court that they would take immediate steps to ensure that the licences for the sale of welfare stamps are issued to all the Advocates'' Associations by the concerned District Magistrates without any further delay. They would report to this Court in this regard too when this case is next listed for hearing.

Put up this case for further hearing in chamber at 3 PM on July 2,1999.