The Court recounted that Section 10A of the EC Act, as it originally stood in 1967, made all offences “cognizable and bailable.” However, the provision was revised in 1974, when the Legislature “consciously omitted the phrase ‘and bailable’“, perhaps on account of rampant black marketing prevailing at the time.
In 1981, the words “non-bailable” were inserted. By another amendment in 1993, the effect of the 1981 amendment was to be taken away after 15 years. As on date, Section 10A only provides for offences to be “cognizable”, the Court noted.
The Court proceeded to surmise that law-makers had consciously chosen not to reinsert that the offences were “bailable” in the said provision. This meant that not all offences under the EC Act are bailable, the Court explained.
“If it was the legislative intent to make all offenses bailable under the Essential Commodities Act, nothing prevented the Legislature which had earlier inserted the phrase “and non-bailable” which stood automatically deleted after a passage of 15 years, to specifically insert in Section 10A that the offences were to be cognizable and bailable,” the Court said.
Source: Barandbench
