VIJAYANARASIMHA REDDY Vs. JOINT TRANSPORT COMMISSIONER AND SECRETARY STATE TRANSPORT AUTHORITY HIMAYATNAGAR HYDERABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In all these cases the petitioners are motor transport operators. They have filed these writ petitions seeking issuance of Writ of Mandamus to compel the State Transport authorities to consider their applications filed by them for grant of temporary permits under Section 68-F (IC) of the Motor Vehicles Act (hereinafter referred to as the act). These transport authorities alone had been made parties-respondents to these petitions. But, in none of these writ petitions the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (hereinafter referred to sometimes as "the APSRTC") was made a party and in none of these cases the petitioners had made any allegations to the effect that the competent transport authorities had formed any opinion under Section 68-F of the Act to the effect that it was necessary in the public interest to increase the number of motor vehicles operating on the area or route or portion covered by any draft notification published under S.68-C of the Act. Just a few days before these writs had been filed into this court, the petitioners had applied into this court, the petitioners had applied to the transport authorities for grant of temporary permits under S.68-F (IC) of the Act and they are now asking that this court should direct the authorities to consider those applications.

(2.) The applications made by the petitioners for grant of temporary permits are of two types. In some cases, the petitioners are asking for grant of temporary permits on routes draft notified under S.68-C while in other cases their demand for grant of temporary permits is for routes which were not draft notified, but were artificially formed and created by them out of two or more draft notified routes. It may be mentioned that the petitioners had, at the admission stage itself, obtained orders from this Court directing the transport authorities to grant temporary permits to them, pending disposal of their writ petitions and that accordingly the petitioners had obtained transport permits and had been running their vehicles till we had vacated the interim orders.

(3.) These writ petitions are strongly opposed by the APSRTC and also by rival private operators, both of whom had impleaded themselves in some of these writ petitions as party respondents. Some of these matters when first came before our learned brother Ramaswamy J. the learned Judge had directed them to be posted before a Division Bench for final hearing. In doing so, the learned Judge framed three questions for consideration. Either in the matter of reliefs asked for or in the nature of facts stated there is no difference worth mentioning between one writ petition and the other.