BHONRILAL Vs. REGIONAL TRANSPORT AUTHORITY JAIPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal under sec. 18 of the Rajasthan High Court Ordinance by one Bhonrilal and is directed against the Judgment of a learned single Judge of this Court dated 7th September, 1966, dismissing the appellant's writ petition under Art. 226 of the Constitution whereby the appellant Bhonrilal questioned the validity of a resolution of the Regional Transport Authority, Jaipur passed in July, 1964 (Ex-9 on the record), for granting permits to respondents Nos. 2 to 21, on the Jaipur-Pilani route for running stage carriage buses. The case set up by the appellant was briefly this :

(2.) BHONRILAL was one of the 59 operators on the Jaipur-Sikar amalgamated route which comprised the following 8 routes : - 1. Jaipur - Sikar direct, 2. Jaipur - Chomu - Rainwal - Bhadwa, 3. Jaipur - Reengus - Sri Madhopur, 4. Jaipur - Chomu - Ajitgarh, 5. Jaipur - Chomu - Chandwari, 6. Jaipur - Pandi - Bilochi, 7. Jaipur - Chomu - Samot, 8. Jaipur - Chomu - Danta. In 1960, the Regional Transport Authority invited applications for a direct route between Jaipur and Pilani, by a notification published in the Rajasthan Gazette dated 15th September, 1960. On 12th October, 1960, the petitioner made an application in pursuance of this notification for the grant of a permit. We will have occasion to refer in detail to this application a little later. The applications received for the stage carriage permits over Jaipur-Pilani route in response to the gazette notification dated 15th September, 1960. were put up at a meeting of the Regional Transport Authority, Jaipur, held on 22/23rd March, 1961, for a decision whether these may be sent for publication, but consideration of the same was postponed by the Regional Transport Authority \ide Ex. 11. Later on the applications were put up again at a meeting of the Regional Transport Authority held on 10/1lth November, 1961, but the Regional Transport Authority once again resolved that the case be postponed. In the year 1963, a number of fresh applications for permits were made before the Regional Transport Authority by other persons including respondents, and were published in three lots on 2nd January, 1964, 27th February, 1964 and 19th March, 1964 respectively. This time the petitioner made a grievance of the fact that though these subsequent applications were published, the application made by him in 1960 had not been published, and he made a representation to the Secretary of the Regional Transport Authority on 1st April, 1964 (vide Ex. 6) to that effect and then again to the Chairman of the Regional Transport Authority on 20th July, 1964 (vide Ex. 7) thereby requesting the Regional Transport Authority to publish the petitioner's application and consider it long with other applications for permits on the Jaipur-Pilani route. As inspite of these representations the petitioner's application was not published and as eventually on 26th May, 1965, permits were granted to the respondents (vide Ex. 9), the petitioner filed the writ petition on 20th July, 1965, praying for an appropriate writ, direction or order quashing the resolution of the Regional Transport Authority (Ex. 9) and to issue a writ of mandamus to the Regional Transport Authority to publish the petitioner's application submitted by him on 13th October, 1960, in accordance with law and then consider the same along with the applications of respondents Nos. 2 to 21.

(3.) MR. D. P. Gupta, appearing for the respondents, realising the weight of the observations made in the above three cases tried to fall back on the other pleas in his written statement regarding which there was no discussion in the judgment of the learned Single Judge. He submitted that though the publication of the petitioner's application was necessary and normally that application should have been considered along with the applications of the respondents, yet the petitioner appellant having failed to lodge any representation against the applications, made by the respondents in accordance with sec. 57 (3) of the Act, the petitioner-appellant could not have been heard by the Regional Transport Authority and for that reason he had disentitled himself from filing a writ petition under Art. 226 of the Constitution as well. For this MR. Gupta relied on Sharma Roadways vs. Sohanlal Soni (2), to which one of us was a party. As the argument proceeds on the language of sec. 57 of the Act, we propose to read the relevant portion of that section. "s. 57 (1) An application for a contract carriage permit of a private carrier's permit may be made at any time. (2) An application for a stage carriage permit or a public carrier's permit shall be made not less than six weeks before the date on which it is desired that the permit shall take effect, or, if the Regional Transport Authority appoints any dates for the receipt of such applications, on such dates. (3) On receipt of an application for a stage carriage permit or a public carrier's permit, the Regional Transport Authority shall make the application available for inspection at the office of the authority and shall publish the application or the substance thereof in the prescribed manner together with a notice of the date before which representations in connection there with may be submitted and the date, not being less than thirty days from such publication, on which, and the time and place at which, the application and any representations received will be considered : Provided that, if the grant of any permit in accordance with the application or with modifications would have the effect of increasing the number of vehicles operating in the region, or in any area or on any route within the region, under the class of permits to which the application relates, beyond the limit fixed in that behalf under sub-sec. (3) of sec. 47 or sub-sec. (2) of sec. 55, as the case may be, the Regional Transport Authority may summarily refuse the application without following the procedure laid down in the sub-section. (4) No representation in connection with an application referred to in sub-sec. (3) shall be considered by the Regional Transport Authority unless it is made in writing before the appointed date and unless a copy thereof is furnished simultaneously to the applicant by the person making such representation. (5) When any representation such as is referred to in sub-sec. (3) is made, the Regional Transport Authority shall dispose of the application at a public hearing at which the applicant and the person making the representation shall have an opportunity of being heard either in person or by a duly authorised representative. MR. Gupta contends that after an application for a stage carriage permit is published, any person who desires to oppose the grant of such permit has to make a representation within thirty days of such publication of the application and such a representation has to be in writing and a copy thereof has to be furnished simultaneously to the applicant and if this is not done, the Regional Transport Authority shall be debarred from considering such a representation. According to MR. Gupta as the petitioner appellant had never filed such a representation against the applications made by the respondents and as no such copy as is contemplated by sub-sec. (4) has been furnished to the respondents, the Regional Transport Authority could not have considered any request on the part of the petitioner for not giving permits to the respondents. He places strong reliance on Sharma Roadway's case (2) and submits that the Court should decline to entertain a writ petition by a party who had not made the representation within time. The argument was quite attractive and on first blush, we must confess, we were considerably impressed by it, but on a closer examination we are unable to find any merit in it. It has to be remembered that the petitioner-appellant was himself an applicant for the grant of a permit like the respondents, and, therefore, the question that really confronts us is whether it is necessary for a rival applicant to file a representation or even without it he can ask for a proper appraisal of his own merits in comparison to the merits of the other applications. In our view, candidates for permits who are already in the arena and are competing against one another need not always file separate representations against the other rival applicants. Once the applications of the candidates are published, it is sufficient notice for everybody including the rival applicants to be forewarned. They ought to bear in mind that the other applicants would plead as to how they deserve consideration in comparison to other applicants. We can conceive of cases where grounds other than those as are incidental to the pleading of one's own cause might be desired to be urged and in such cases a written representation might be necessary. In the present case, however, all that the petitioner appellant wanted to ensure was the publication of his own application and then a proper considerateion of the same along with those filed by others. As held in the three Division Bench cases of this Court, already referred to, it was the plain duty of the Regional Transport Authority to publish all the applications that were pending at the time it ordered the publication of respondents' applications and then to consider them together so that their just and proper disposal would be ensured. The request that the petitioner was making to the Regional Transport Authority was not, in the very nature of things, for refusing the grant of permits to the respondents outright. In such a case therefore, a separate representation by the petitioner, in our view, was not necessary and sec. 57 (4) could hardly apply to such a contingency. The Regional Transport Authority was certainly reminded of its duty by the petitioner for publishing all the applications when it had only published the subsequent applications but had not published the application filed by the petitioner made earlier in 1960.