Amendment status not verified — confirm the current text below against the official source.
Restriction on the sale of liquor is not violative of fundamental rights. - While deal- ing with this question, the High Court held that the restrictions are reasonable and it was ob- served :- "Nor is there any substance in the protest that the two orders, the validity of which is now being challenged, constitute a direct interference with the liberty of the subject or violate the Constitution. The harmful effects of intoxicating liquors and their tendency to deprive public morals have been known and recognised ever since the dawn welfare has always assumed to itself the powers to regulate or prohibit the manufacture, possession and sale of intoxicating liquors, to prohibit sales to persons of tender years and to prescribe the hours of the day and of the week during which places of sale may be open. Courts in Americal have held that the right to sell liquor is not a natural of fundamental right of a citizen, but a privilege which the State may grant or deny, and consequently that a person has no inherent right to engage in selling liquor he must do so on such terms as the appropriate authority may consider necessary or reasonable. The position in India is not widely different. It may be that in the absence of a restraining enactment a citizen of the country has a right to carry on business in the purchase and sale of intoxicating liquor, but it is within the power of the legislature, in view of the provisions of Article 19(6), to impose such reasonable restric- tions of the exercise of this right as it may consider fit or proper. India is wedded to the policy of prohibition and the State Legislature has directed that the State Government shall take steps to implement the said policy. "I can see nothing wrong or improper either legally or morally in the State endeavoring to carry out the mandate of the legislature and as a first step, introducing prohibition in social clubs. In the peculiar circumstances of his case the power of regulation is wide enough to embrace the power of prohibition."