S MSHINDE Vs. S BBAGLI AND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner was an operator of a public carrier vehicle on the route between Bijapur and the frontier of the Mysore State. On July 1, 1961, the Regional Transport Authority, Bijapur was instructed by the State Transport Authority to call for applications for the purpose of selecting persons who should be authorised to extend their operation from the frontier to the City of Bombay. On September 14, 1961, those applications were notified by the Regional Transport Authority, Bijapur by means of a Notification. The petitioner and 99 others were the applicants. After considering those applications and after hearing the applicants, the Regional Transport Authority made a recommendation to the State Transport Authority that the petitioner may be granted the extension of service. Against that recommendation made by the Regional Transport Authority, respondent 1 presented what we consider to be an extremely misguided revision petition to the State Transport Appellate Tribunal, and that patently misconceived revision petition was entertained and allowed by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal. The direction given by the Tribunal was that the Regional Transport Authority should publish the applications received by it under Section 57 (3) of the Motor Vehicles Act and then to decide to whom the extension of service should be given by the adoption of the procedure prescribed in that Section. The result was that the recommendation made by the Regional Transport Authority to the State Transport Authority lapsed and the Regional Transport Authority had now to proceed with the matter as directed by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal. In this writ petition presented by the petitioner the order made by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal is challenged on two grounds; the first is, that no revision petition was possible to the State Transport Appellate Tribunal under Section 64-A of the Motor Vehicles Act since such revision petition could be preferred only in respect of an order made by the Regional Transport Authority. Since what the Regional Transport Authority did was merely to make a recommendation and since that authority had made no order against which a revision lies, Mr. Shetty appearing on behalf of the petitioner urged that the revision petition was not maintainable and that the Tribunal had no power or competence to make any order in the revision petition or to issue any direction to the Regional Transport Authority.

(2.) This submission made by Mr. Shetty before us is, in our opinion, unanswerable and has to be upheld. The Regional Transport Authority in this case, we have been informed by Mr. Government pleader made the recommendation to the State Transport Authority since such recommendation was necessary under the administrative scheme relating to the grant of Inter-State Permits. However that may be it is clear that the only authority which can grant an Inter-State Permit and which has the jurisdiction to grant it is as provided by Section 63 of the Motor Vehicles Act the concerned Regional Transport Authority subject of course to the condition that the permit granted by the Regional Transport Authority shall have no validity outside the State unless in the case of an Inter-State permit that permit is also counter-signed by the concerned Transport Authority in the other State. That being so, the only authority which can grant the permit in this case to the petitioner under which he could operate in the State of Bombay was the Bijapur Regional Transport Authority and if it granted that permit to the petitioner, that permit has to be counter-signed in order to have validity, by the concerned Transport Authority in the State of Bombay. But since the petitioner was already holding a permit between Bijapur and the State Border the application by the petitioner in effect was one for variation of a condition of his already existing permit so as to extend the route from the border of the Mysore State till the City of Bombay.

(3.) Now it is clear from the provisions of Section 57(8) of the Motor Vehicles Act that such variation of the condition of the permit is possible only by the adoption of the procedure prescribed for the disposal of an application for a permit which means that the application presented by the petitioner as well as those presented by the other 99 persons had to be published in the first instance under Section 57 (3) of the Motor Vehicles Act. In that view of the matter the recommendation made by the Regional Transport Authority to the State Transport Authority although such recommendation was, according to the administrative procedure which was being followed by the Regional and State Transport Authorities, necessary, was not an 'order' made by the Regional Transport Authority under the Motor Vehicles Act but was purely an administrative act in respect of which no revision petition could have been preferred under Section 64-A of the Act to the State Transport Appellate Tribunal. Mr. Shetty is therefore quite right in contending before us that the revision petition presented by respondent 1 was an incompetent revision petition on which the Tribunal could have made no order. ,