KASHI PRASAD GUPTA Vs. REGIONAL TRANSPORT AUTHORITY GORAKHPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition is by one Sri Kashi Prasad Gupta who holds a stage carnage permit in respect of Gorakhpur Gola via Khajni and Urwa route under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939. Since 1955 the strength of permits on this route was enlarged to ten. There is another route in the same area which is known by the name of Gorakhpur Gola via Khajni and Urwa Malhapur route. Its strength was two permits. As they happened to be partly identical routes the Regional Transport Authority had permitted the operators on both the routes to ply on either with the effect that the strength of the two routes put together became 12.

(2.) The petitioner claims that the traffic requirements of the routes did not justify the grant of 12 permits. For this reason, even though the strength of the first route had been increased from 7 to 10 in 1955, the additional permits were not granted until one was done in January 1958, second in April 1959 and the third in July 1959. Even then, in view of the insufficient traffic requirements, the buses plied in rotation so that the four buses had to remain idle on any particular date. The Transport Department of the State Government, which are running their own stage carriages in different parts of the State, were according to the petitioner, anxious to accommodate a large number of operators who were being displaced from various routes taken over by them for what is called nationalised transport. In their attempt to do so they moved the Regional Transport Authority to raise the strength of these routes from 10 to 16 in one case and from 2 to 5 in the other. This matter, which was objected to by the petitioner and other operators plying vehicles on these routes, came up before the Regional Transport Authority for consideration on 7th July 1959. Alter an adjournment the Regional Transport Authority finally decided on 26th September 1959 against increasing the sanctioned strength on these routes. In the same meeting one of the items of agenda also was the question of offering of alternative routes to some of the stage carriage owners. Of these Ram Avadh Misra, respondent No. 3, used to be an operator on Deoria Lar via Sulempur route and Mohd. Ismail, respondent No. 4, and Mahabir Prasad, respondent No. 5 on Siswa Thuthi Bari route. By another resolution the Regional Transport Authority offered them alternative routes under Sub-section (2) of Section 68-G which were the routes held by the petitioner. This offer having been accepted by the above operators, the permits in their favour on their former routes were endorsed by the Regional Transport Authority on Gorakhpur Gola via Gajni route. The petitioner, whose interest has thereby been prejudicially affected, therefore, tiled this petition impugning the action of the Regional Transport Authority by asking that their resolution dated 26th September 1959 might be quashed and they be further directed to forbear from placing the said respondents on the route in question.

(3.) One of the objections taken is that the Regional Transport Authority having itself held that there was no scope for further increase in the strength of the permits on this route, with due regard to its traffic requirements, its action in thrusting the three operators on it was illegal and without authority. Sub-section (3) of Section 47 of the Motor Vehicles Act requires the Regional Transport Authority to limit the number of stage carriage permits which may be granted in the region or on a specified route. The limit fixed in the case of the instant route which was 12 only had been exceeded by the introduction of these three new operators. The objection thus is that the Regional Transport Authority was incompetent to grant permits beyond the limit fixed by it; this limit was still binding upon it notwithstanding the provision in Section 68-B which given an overriding effect to the provisions in Ch. IVA of the Motor Vehicles Act in which Section 68-G too existed. The action of the Regional Transport Authority is further impugned as capricious.