BIHAR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Bihar Transport Association and its honorary General Secretary are petitioners 1 and 2 respectively in this writ petition. They seek a declaration from this Court that having regard to the facts and circumstances of this case, the action of the respondent authorities in realising late fine at the rate of Rs. 100 per month for each State for the issuance of authorisation slips under Rule 87 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules was without any legal sanction; the petitioners consequently further seek a direction to the authorities for the refund of the money realised as late fee.

(2.) For operating a goods carriage vehicle in other States the operator requires a national permit as provided under Sub-Section (12) of Section 88 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. Further, for grant of permit for operating a goods carriage vehicles outside the State, an authorisation is issued by the State Transport Authority. The authorisation is issued for a period not exceeding one year at a time and an application for its renewal is required to be made not less than 15 days before the date of its expiry. Rule 87 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules provides the form and the manner in which an application is to be made for the grant of an authorisation and also lays down that the application for the grant of authorisation must be accompanied by a fee of Rs. 500 per annum in the form of Bank Draft. In view of the relevant legal provisions it is obvious that in respect of authorisations expiring on December 31, 1992, applications for renewal were to be made by mid December so as to be 15 days before the date of their expiry.

(3.) It is stated in the writ petition that the members of the Association whose authorisations were expiring at the end of December, 1994 and who intended to make applications for their renewal had accordingly got Bank Drafts made for the requisite fee a few days prior to the last date for filing the applications for renewal. In support of this statement copies of a few Bank Drafts dated December 6 and 8, 1994 are enclosed as Annexure-1 to the writ petition. It is further stated that their applications for issuance of authorisation slips was complete in all respects and were only waiting to be filed before the competent authority in the office of the State Transport Authority on the due date. However, the non-gazetted employees of the State Government went on strike from 14-12-1994 as a result of which the office of the State Transport Authority was closed and become disfunctional from that date. It is asserted in the writ petition that when the petitioners went to the office for submitting the applications they were unable to do so as the office was closed due to the strike of the non-gazetted employees. The applications could be finally submitted on 15-2-1995 only after the strike was withdrawn on 13-2-1995 and the petitioners came to learn that the Government offices had started functioning normally. At the time of submission of the applications the petitioners were to asked to make payment of any late fine but when they went to the office to collect the authorisation slips they were told that the authorisation slips would be issued only on payment of late fine @ Rs. 100 per month for each State. The petitioners made representations before the State Transport Commissioner protesting against the demand for the payment of late fine but not getting any favourable response from him they came to this Court and filed this writ petition. However, as there was some delay in this application being taken up and in the meanwhile for want of the authorisation slips their business suffered from day to day the applicants deposited, under protest, the late fine as demanded by the authorities. Thereupon the authorisation slips were duly issued. On account of this subsequent development taking place after the filing of the writ petition the petitioners modified the reliefs prayed for in the writ petition and they now seek the reliefs as stated at the opening of this order.