Mumbai’s restaurant crackdown led by Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe has come under judicial scrutiny, with the Bombay High Court cautioning the regulator against “shooting first and then asking questions” and questioning the practice of ordering immediate closures of food establishments without following due process, The Indian Express reported.
Over the past month, benches of the Bombay High Court in Mumbai, Nagpur and Aurangabad have reined in the FDA’s enforcement drive, staying or setting aside licence suspensions in at least nine cases involving dairies, milk vendors, a four-star hotel and a landmark restaurant in Mumbai’s Fort area.
The court has consistently held that immediate licence suspension is an exceptional measure that can only be invoked when there is a demonstrable threat to public health, not for routine hygiene deficiencies or infrastructure-related lapses, according to the report.
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The legal dispute centres on Section 32 of the Food Safety and Standards Act. Under the law, food businesses must ordinarily receive an improvement notice outlining deficiencies and be given at least 14 days to rectify them before their licence can be suspended.
The Act permits immediate suspension only in exceptional circumstances where public health is at risk, provided the reasons are recorded in writing.
The FDA defended the crackdown, saying surprise inspections uncovered serious shortcomings in hygiene, food storage and sanitation across establishments.
It also maintained that the enforcement drive was carried out uniformly and included inspections of government-run canteens as well as prominent institutions.
However, the High Court has repeatedly questioned whether the threshold for invoking emergency powers was met. In one case involving an 80-year-old dairy in Wardha, the Nagpur bench ruled that only one food item posed a potential health risk, while deficiencies such as slippery floors and storage issues did not justify shutting the entire establishment.
The court allowed authorities to take action only against the specific product found to be unsafe.
In another case, the Aurangabad bench observed that issues such as broken tiles or open drainage chambers did not warrant the abrupt suspension of food licences without first issuing improvement notices.
Similarly, a Navi Mumbai four-star hotel secured relief after a court-appointed inspection found that most shortcomings had already been rectified and that the presence of two insects alone did not justify continued closure.
The sharpest observations came during hearings involving Poornima Restaurant in South Mumbai, where the court compared FDA inspections of private restaurants with those of government canteens.
The bench stressed that food safety laws must be enforced uniformly, irrespective of whether an establishment is privately owned or operated by the government.
While acknowledging the FDA’s efforts to improve food safety standards, the High Court emphasised that enforcement powers cannot override statutory safeguards and that regulatory action must remain proportionate and follow due process.
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