NADIR HUSAIN Vs. REGIONAL TRANSPORT OFFICER KANPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Farrukhabad-Jarianpur via Ghatiaghat-Rajapur-Amritpur route (hereinafter referred to as the route) appears to be partly notified and partly non-notified. This Court, in a writ petition preferred by the petitioner and others, on 21st April, 1989, directed the Regional Transport Authority, Kanpur (hereinafter referred to as the Transport Authority) to consider and dispose of the applications made by the petitioner and others for the grant of temporary permits on the route. In pursuance of this direction, the Secretary of the Transport Authority granted a temporary stage carriage permit to the petitioner on the non-notified portion of the route and rejected the application for the notified portion on the ground that he had no jurisdiction to grant a temporary permit on that portion. The order rejecting the application for notified portion is being impugned in the present writ petition.

(2.) Section 68F of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as the Act) casts a mandatory duty upon a Regional Transport Authority or the State Transport authority, as the case may be, to issue a permit to a State Transport Undertaking if such an undertaking makes an application for a permit in pursuance of an approved scheme. The enacting part of the provisions of S. 68-FF mandates that no Transport Authority shall grant any permit except in accordance with the provisions of the Scheme. This embargo is relaxed by the proviso to the said provision which lays down that where no application for permit has been made by the State Transport Undertaking in respect of any notified area or notified route in pursuance of an approved scheme, the Transport Authority concerned may grant temporary permit to any person in respect of any area or route or portion thereof subject to the condition that such permit shall cease to be effective on the issue of a permit to the State Transport Undertaking in respect of that area or route.

(3.) There is no dispute that the petitioner can get a temporary permit on the notified portion of the route only if the conditions laid down in the proviso to S. 68-FF are in existence. Under the proviso the Regional Transport Authority or the State Transport Authority, as the case may be, alone and not their Secretary are authorised to grant a temporary permit. Even this proposition is not disputed by the learned Counsel appearing for the petitioner. The contention, however, is that the delegation made by the Transport Authority in favour of its Secretary to grant temporary permits under S. 62 of the Act clothes the Secretary with sufficient power to grant a temporary permit under S. 68-FF. To buttress this submission, Sri Saunders has further submitted that, in substance and in reality, a temporary permit will be granted under S. 62 of the Act even though the occasion for exercising such a power will arise on the conditions enumerated in the proviso to S. 68-FF being fulfilled. The submission is fallacious.