A company based in Delhi challenged a show cause notice issued in Mumbai, to three people living in Mumbai, about conduct alleged to have occurred in Maharashtra. The Delhi High Court held that impleading the Ministry and FSSAI, both situated in Delhi, could not manufacture jurisdiction where none otherwise existed, and dismissed the petition without touching the merits.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed as non-maintainable a writ petition filed by the master licensee of the VIMAL brand challenging a show cause notice issued by the Food and Drug Administration, Mumbai to three of its brand ambassadors, holding that neither the location of FSSAI in Delhi nor the petitioner’s own presence there could confer territorial jurisdiction on the Court [P B Agro LLP v. Union of India and Others].
Dr. Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma held that the petitioner had failed to establish that any substantial or material part of the cause of action had arisen within the Court’s territorial limits, and added that the courts in Maharashtra were in any event the more appropriate forum. The petition was dismissed without any opinion being expressed on the merits of the challenge.
The background
The petitioner described itself as the master licensee for the manufacture and sale of elaichi and pan masala not containing tobacco under the VIMAL brand, and said it engages actors as brand ambassadors under formal endorsement agreements in which it undertakes that the campaigns will comply with all applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.
Its grievance was that it learnt through media reports that the FDA, Mumbai had issued a show cause notice on August 11, 2026 to three of its brand ambassadors in relation to the advertising campaign for its product. The notice invoked the provisions on restrictions on advertisements and unfair trade practices under Section 24 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and referred to the prohibition on pan masala in Maharashtra under Section 30(2)(a). The petitioner said no notice had been issued to it and no hearing given, although the directions in the notice were in substance directed at its business.
Appearing for the petitioner, senior counsel argued that jurisdiction lay under both limbs of Article 226. Under Article 226(1), because the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and FSSAI, the apex authority under the FSS Act, are located in Delhi and the FDA Mumbai functions under FSSAI’s overall supervision. Under Article 226(2), because the petitioner carries on business only from Delhi, the campaign was managed from Delhi, payments to the ambassadors were made from Delhi and the injury was suffered in Delhi. It was also pressed that the Central Consumer Protection Authority, situated in New Delhi, was already seized of the surrogate advertising question and had itself issued a show cause notice to the petitioner.
The Additional Solicitor General and Central Government Standing Counsel for the Ministry and the CCPA, and counsel for FSSAI, all contended that the petition failed at the threshold, pointing out that the notice bore the letterhead of the Government of Maharashtra and that the State of Maharashtra, the authority principally responsible, was not even before the Court.
The facts the Court treated as decisive
The Court set out a short list of undisputed facts and allowed them to do most of the work. The notice was issued by an authority of the Government of Maharashtra. It was addressed to three brand ambassadors, all residents of Mumbai. None of those three had approached the Delhi High Court. And the petitioner, which had, was not a noticee at all.
Nothing was placed before the Court to show that FSSAI had directed the FDA, Mumbai to issue the notice or to initiate any particular action. The material indicated that the notice was an action independently initiated by the State authority on its own assessment.
On the impleadment of the Delhi-based authorities, the Court held that the mere addition of parties without any relief sought against them could not supply what was otherwise absent, observing that the petitioner had not pointed to any independent order, direction or decision of the Ministry or FSSAI under challenge.
The Court then spelt out the consequence of accepting the petitioner’s argument:
“If such a principle were accepted, a company carrying on business throughout the country could challenge every order or notice issued by a State authority before the High Court within whose jurisdiction its registered office or principal place of business is situated, irrespective of the place of issuance of the order, the authority issuing it, the persons affected by it or the subject matter of the proceedings.”
Applied to FSSAI specifically, the Court noted that if the apex body’s presence in Delhi were enough, every notice issued by any State Food and Drug Administration anywhere in the country could be brought to the Delhi High Court, which would render the territorial limitations in Article 226 practically meaningless.
The pleadings themselves pointed to Maharashtra
The most interesting part of the reasoning turns the petitioner’s own writ petition against it. The Court went through the averments and found that the substance of the challenge was that VIMAL pan masala is not manufactured or sold in Maharashtra, that the FDA Mumbai had misunderstood the product being advertised, and that the allegedly prohibited activity had not taken place in that State.
Those assertions, the Court held, were not incidental background but a substantial part of the case, and each of them located the controversy squarely in Maharashtra. A petitioner arguing that a State authority has got the facts wrong about activity in that State is, on its own pleadings, raising a dispute belonging to that State.
Citing Alchemist Ltd. v. State of Bank of Sikkim, the Court reiterated that not every fact pleaded forms part of the cause of action, and that what matters is whether the fact is material, essential or integral to it. It added a caution about pleadings being moulded so as to project incidental facts as the cause of action while the material facts lie elsewhere. The Court also relied on ONGC v. Utpal Kumar Basu, Aligarh Muslim University v. Vinay Engineering Enterprises, State of Rajasthan v. Swaika Properties and Union of India v. Adani Exports Ltd., the common thread being that the location of a petitioner’s office is not a jurisdictional fact.
On the CCPA proceedings, the Court held that the notice issued by FDA Mumbai and the CCPA’s own investigation, which arises from a direction of the Allahabad High Court in public interest proceedings on surrogate and pan masala advertising, were prima facie separate proceedings by separate authorities. The pendency of similar proceedings before a Delhi-based body could not confer jurisdiction over an independent notice issued by a State authority.
Distinguishing the authority the petitioner leaned on
The petitioner had repeatedly relied on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bakshish Ahmad v. Union of India, in which the Delhi High Court was held to have jurisdiction over a Border Security Force dismissal even though the order was passed outside Delhi.
The High Court distinguished it on a specific statutory footing. That decision rested on Ranjeet Mal v. General Manager, Northern Railway, on Sections 4 and 5 of the Border Security Force Act, 1968, which made the Union and the Director General necessary parties, and on Rule 22(4) of the BSF Rules, under which every order of dismissal has to be reported to the Director General in Delhi. No comparable statutory chain linked the FDA Mumbai’s notice to any Delhi authority here.
Quoting a coordinate bench in Indure Private Limited v. Government of NCT of Delhi, the Court set out the institutional concern behind the rule:
“A petitioner who approaches this Court to assail a decision of an authority situated in Delhi, when the underlying cause for the said decision lies elsewhere, effectively attempts to make this High Court a mini-pan-India superior court exercising jurisdiction over all events which take place throughout this Country.”
Forum conveniens as a second and independent ground
The Court added that even assuming some remote or incidental cause of action could be shown in Delhi, this was not an appropriate case for exercising jurisdiction, given that the entire cause of action arose in Maharashtra and the actual noticees, resident there, had not challenged the notice at all.
Relying on Kusum Ingots & Alloys Ltd. v. Union of India and State of Goa v. Summit Online Trade Solutions, the Court reiterated that even where a small part of the cause of action arises within its limits, a High Court may decline to exercise discretionary jurisdiction where the principal and material facts lie within the jurisdiction of another.
Why it matters
Nothing in this judgment says anything about surrogate advertising, about whether the notice was validly issued, or about whether the brand ambassadors or the company have any answer to it. The Court was explicit that it expressed no opinion on the merits, and the show cause notice stands exactly where it stood, to be answered before the authority that issued it.
What the judgment does address is a familiar pattern in regulatory litigation. Where a national regulator sits in Delhi and enforcement is carried out by State authorities, a company facing State action has an incentive to frame its challenge around the Delhi-based apex body, which offers a single forum, a body of favourable precedent and distance from a local regulator. The judgment closes that route where the State action is genuinely independent, and the test it applies is practical: is there any direction, communication or decision of the central body in the record, and is any relief actually sought against it.
The second point of interest is the Court’s treatment of standing alongside jurisdiction. The petitioner was not a noticee, had not been asked to reply, and faced no order. The Court did not dismiss on standing, but the absence of any direct regulatory demand on the petitioner runs through the jurisdictional reasoning, since an apprehension about the consequences of a notice issued to somebody else was held not to be a completed or substantial cause of action.
For the petitioner the practical effect is a change of venue rather than a defeat, since the remedy lies before the courts in Maharashtra. For companies structuring regulatory challenges, the message is that the choice of forum will be tested against the substance of the pleadings, and that pleading a Delhi office and a Delhi-based regulator is not enough when the dispute itself belongs somewhere else.
Case Title: P B Agro LLP v. Union of India and Others [W.P.(C) 12664/2026 and CM APPL. 58858/2026]
Bench: Dr. Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi
Reserved on: September 7, 2026 | Pronounced on: September 14, 2026 | CNR No. DLHC010410092026
Appearances: Senior Advocates Dayan Krishnan and Mohit Mathur with Advocates Seema Jain, Ajay K. Jain, Dushyant K. Mahant, Shivani G. Mahant, Ripudaman Sharma, Harish C. Suri, Radhika Yadav, Shreedhar Kale and Vignesh Ramanathan for the petitioner. Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma with CGSC Rukhmini Bobde, GP Vinay Koushik and Advocates Vinayak Aren and Aishwarya Nigam for respondents 1 and 4. Advocates Rakesh Chaudhary and Jay Sharma for respondent 2, FSSAI.