Chennai: Holding that national security is of paramount importance and an individual interest shall be subservient to the interest of the nation, the Madras high court has upheld the orders of the Central government, suspending the license of a dealer in ammonium nitrate in Karur, who allegedly indulged in illegal activities in the sale and supply of the chemical and rejecting his plea to grant license for importing the material.
Justice T.S. Sivagnanam dismissed petitions filed by Sri Amman Chemicals represented by its partner P. Kumaresan, challenging the orders of the chief controller and joint controller of Explosives, Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation.
Amman Chemicals was granted a license to store and trade in the chemical. The company, whose buyers were engaged in agricultural activities, also applied for grant of license to import the chemical. On August 19, 2015, its application for import license was rejected on the ground that the issue of import license was considered only in favour of ammonium nitrate users, in the interest of national security. By an order dated May 20, 2016, the license granted to the company was suspended and a show cause notice was issued asking why the license granted to it should not be cancelled. Assailing these two orders, the company filed the present petitions.
Concurring with the submission of Additional solicitor general G. Rajagopalan, assisted by B.Rabu Manohar, senior panel counsel, the judge said from a perusal of the impugned order, it was seen that a letter was received by the authorities from Customs stating that the petitioner has received 696 MT of ammonium nitrate at Chennai port and 500MT at Visakhapatnam port without a valid license and further imported 740MT from Korea at Chennai port. It was alleged that the petitioner had supplied the material to an unlicensed firm in Bengaluru.
The petitioner had supplied 75kg to 2,92,000kg to several quarries, which did not possess license and thus the authorities stated that In view of these illegal activities, the license granted to the petitioner was suspended.
