SHIV SINGH Vs. STATE TRANSPORT APPELLATE TRIBUNAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are two special appeals against the judgment of a learned Single Judge of this Court by which he dismissed a writ petition filed by the appellants for quashing an order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal U. P.

(2.) THE circumstances which led up to this petition may be briefly stated. In December 1960 Baharaich- Rupaidiha route was advertised by the Regional Transport Authority, Gorakhpur and applications were invited by it for permanent stage carriage permits. The route was a new one and the number of permits to be granted for it had been fixed at four. The appellants and respondents Nos. 3 and 4 applied for permit along with many other persons. The applications received in response to the advertisement came up for consideration before the Regional Transport Authority on April 15, 1961. On that date the Regional Transport Authority decided to raise the number of permits to be issued for the route from four to six and granted permits as follows: One permit to Shiv Singh appellant No. 1 jointly with Param Hans Singh; one permit to Narain Ram appellant No. 2; one permit to Har Saran Dass appellant No. 3; one joint permit to Mohd. Khatib Ahmad Siddiqi appellant No. 4, and Zainduddin Ahmad appellant No. 5; one joint permit to Abdul Majid and Mohammad Bashir; and one joint permit to Onkar Mal Lakshmi Narain Maheshwari. The applications of respondents Nos. 3 and 4 were rejected and no permit was granted to them. The grantees of the last two permits did not, however, lift their permits which were, consequently revoked by the Regional Transport Authority on September 14, 1961. Subsequently, by a resolution dated January 8, 1962 the Regional Transport Authority deleted the name of Param Hans from the permit issued to him jointly with Shiv Singh appellant No. 1. The parties differ as to the reason for the deletion, but the position in any case was that the four permits granted for the Baharaich- Rupaidiha route came to be held by the appellants, the first three holding one permit each and the remaining two holding a joint permit. Against the order of the Regional Transport Authority granting these permits to the aforesaid ten persons in the manner indicated above two appeals were filed, appeal No. 209 of 1961 by respondent No. 3 and appeal No. 332 of 1961 by respondent No. 4. When the appeals came up for hearing before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal it appears to have been urged on behalf of the appellants that irrespective of anything else in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in Abdul Mateen v. Ram Kailash Pandey, AIR 1963 SC 64 the order of the Regional Transport Authority was invalid because it could not have raised the number of permits from four to six. What the learned counsel for the respondents to the appeals actually or in effect said in regard to the above contention is a matter on which the parties are not agreed. However, by its order dated May 15, 1963 the State Transport Appellate Tribunal set aside the order of the Regional Transport Authority and directed it to fill the vacancies according to law. The material portion of the order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal -- and that is the only portion dealing with the merits of the appeal -- is as follows:

(3.) THE initial question in that connection is whether there were, as the learned single Judge held, eight records in respect of which the applicants prayed for a writ of certiorari or there was only one record. To us it appears that both before the R. T. A. and before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal there was one single record, and the order passed by the Tribunal was in respect of one single record even though it disposed of two appeals in each of which the grantees of four separate permits were arrayed as respondents. The claim of no applicant for permit could be considered in isolation and without reference to the claims of the other applicants. By the very nature of its task the Regional Transport Authority was called upon to choose between the applicants by judging the relative claims of all of them together and it was only upon a comparative assessment of the suitability of air the applicants that the permits could be granted. In these circumstances the record relating to the grant of permits was, in our opinion, only one record and it was not split up into as many as the number of applicants nor further split up into two records in respect of each grantee of a permit by the fact of two separate appeals having been filed by two unsuccessful applicants. We are also of the opinion that the appellants could have filed a joint writ petition and it was not necessary that each of them should have filed a separate petition. The State Transport Appellate Tribunal did not at all consider the respective claims of the parties before it to the grant of permit and it only directed the Regional Transport Authority to fill the vacancies according to law by setting aside its order, The order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal was, therefore, not merely one which affected all the appellants equally but was also an indivisible order giving rise to a joint grievance to the appellants and, therefore, to a joint interest in all the applicants to have the grievance redressed by means of a writ quashing the order.