M NAINA MOHAMMED Vs. K A NATARAJAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A spiral of reversals is the fate of this litigative battle between the appellant and the first respondent over a permit to ply a bus on the route between Madurai and Pararamakkudi, in Tamil Nadu. While its admission into this Court was by special leave, the first round of the contest was fought before the R. T.A. (Regional Transport Authority) which on an evaluation of the relative merits and demerits of the rivals, granted the permit to the present appellant, but this victory was short-lived because, at the second stage of the legal bout, the S. T.A.T. (State Transport Appellate Tribunal) held that the respondent before us had better claims. The worsted appellant invoked the writ jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226 and the learned Single Judge, who heard the petition rejudged the relevance and weight of the points, pro and con, and as a result of this adjudicator exercise on facts, demolished the order of the S.T.A.T. The learned Judge disagreed with the conclusion of the S.T.A.T. but, instead of sending the case back for a fresh look at the merits of the matter, set aside the permit granted to the respondent and affirmed the award in favour of the appellant. Thereupon, the respondent moved a Division Bench of that Court which felt that a full-scale re-appraisal of the points for and against each claimant was in excess of the jurisdiction of the Single Judge under Article 226 although it noticed that certain factors not relevant to the adjudication had been taken into consideration by the S. T.A.T, Consequently. the order of the learned Judge was set aside, the result being that the respondent's permit was restored. The appellant urged that the decision of the Division Bench of the High Court was utterly wrong and somewhat casual, while that of the learned Single Judge was careful, elaborate and correct. Of course, this view of the matter was hotly controverted by counsel for the 1st respondent but, after having heard both Shri K. S. Ramamurthy for the appellant, and Shri M.K. Ramamurthy for the respondent, we are satisfied that the reluctant course of remitting the whole case to the S.T.A.T. for a de novo disposal is called for as a matter of law and in the interests of justice.

(2.) The boundaries of the High Court's jurisdiction under Article 226 are clearly and strongly built and cannot be breached without risking jurisprudential confusion (Sri Rama Vilas Service (P.) Ltd. v. C. Chandrasekharan. (1964) 5 SCR 869 ). The power is supervisory in nature, although the Judges at both the tiers, in the instant case, have unwittingly slipped into the subtle, but fatal, error of exercising a kind of appellate review.

(3.) Shri M. K. Ramamurthy, for the respondent, was right in pointing out that the learned Single Judge went into the factum and weight of the claims which could be put in the scales in choosing the better of the two applicants for the permit. However, the Court rightly pointed out that some relevant factors had been ignored by the S. T. A. T. (for example, 'that the first respondent's history sheet was not clean') and included in the judicial verdict factors which were extraneous, such as 'that the bus of the petitioner did not, in fact. ply from 2-9-1965 to 4-12-1965'. This being attributable to non-payment of surcharge rather than operational inefficiency. A reading of the learned Single Judge's judgment leaves us in no doubt that he had undertaken an evaluation of the merits on his own. This, undoubtedly, was beyond the jurisdiction of the High Court Nor is it possible to support the direction that if there were errors of law vitiating that S.T. A. Ts. finding, the case need not go back for fresh consideration but could be finally decided by the High Court itself