In Hotel Alankar v. State of Maharashtra, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court (Kolhapur Bench), comprising Justices Sharmila Deshmukh and Neeraj Dhote, has held that a licence suspension imposed under Section 32 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 cannot be kept alive indefinitely once the food business operator has actually rectified the deficiencies that led to the suspension in the first place. The ruling set aside an appellate order that had upheld continued suspension of the petitioner's FSSAI licence despite a marked improvement in compliance on re-inspection.
The petitioner's establishment had initially been found deficient on a food safety inspection, prompting suspension of its licence. On a subsequent re-inspection, however, the establishment's compliance score had improved sharply — from 69% to what the Court described as an "exemplar" 97% — yet the suspension was kept in force and an appeal against its continuation was rejected by the appellate authority. The petitioner approached the Bombay High Court arguing that once the specific deficiencies justifying suspension had been substantially cured, there was no continuing statutory basis to keep the licence suspended.
The Bench agreed. It held that a suspension under Section 32 is a corrective, not a punitive, measure — it is meant to compel a food business operator to fix identified deficiencies, not to operate as an open-ended penalty that persists after compliance has demonstrably improved. Absent a continuing, identifiable public-health risk that independently justifies keeping the establishment shut, an authority cannot simply let a suspension run on once the operator has done what the suspension order required. The Court accordingly set aside the appellate order upholding continued suspension.