NEW DELHI : Amid concerns over shortage of cooking gas because of war in the Gulf region, a nine-judge SC bench testing the correctness of court’s 1978 interpretation of ‘industry’ Tuesday caught many in the courtroom by surprise when it observed that LPG has impacted industry.When AG R Venkataramani was pointing out the obsoleteness of the nearly 50-yearold expansive definition of ‘industry’, Justice B V Nagarathna, part of the CJI-led nine-judge bench, said, “LPG has impacted the industry considerably.” AG was quick to react — “There is no LPG shortage in the country today.”It brought smiles on every face when Justice Nagarathna said by LPG she meant liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. “Since the 1970s, lot has happened on all three LPG fronts and the court would take into account these developments and attempt to test the definition of industry rendered by an SC bench in the 1978 case,” she said. It appears she borrowed the words from a 2019 SC judgment. The AG was again quick to retrieve his wit and said SC had rendered the definition of ‘industry half a century ago when socialism was the flavour of politics and economy. “Markets have opened considerably since the 1990s.”
