Gopalan vs S.T.A.T., Trivandrum and Others

Madhavan Nair, J.—In respect of 3 routes nationalised under Chapter 1VA of the Motor Vehicles Act, renewals of permit were sought by the appellants and were granted by the Transport Authorities concerned. The District Transport Officers who objected to the renewals of permits preferred appeals before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal, which were rejected as not maintainable. They then moved O. P. No. 2237, 2238 and 2239 of 1963, under Article 226 of the Constitution, to quash the orders of the S. T. A. T. and they have been allowed by Govindan Nair J. by one judgment, which is challenged in these three appeals by the respective operators. The only question here is whether an order to renew a permit is appealable u/s 64 of the Motor Vehicles Act. That Section reads:

Any person--

(a) ....

(f) being a local authority or police authority or an association which or a person providing transport facilities who, having opposed the grant of a permit is aggrieved by the grant thereof...

may...appeal to the prescribed authority...

That the District Transport Officers come within the class of persons mentioned in clause (f) is not disputed. The contention is that clause (f) applies to grants of fresh permits only and not to renewals of existing permits. The scope of clause (f), has been considered by the Supreme Court in Ram Gopal Vs. Anant Prasad and Another, . Their Lordships held:

Clause (f) deals with a case where an objection had been filed against the fresh grant or the renewal of a permit but the permit has nonetheless been granted or renewed. The clause gives the objector a right of appeal against the result of the rejection of his objection if he is one of the persons mentioned in it.

It is clear that in their Lordships view, the expression "the grant of a permit" means "the grant of a permit, fresh or renewed.

Counsel relied on The Central Provinces Transport Services, Jabalpur v State Transport Authority, Bombay (I. L. R. 1961 Bombay 174) where occurs an observation: "From the language used in els. (a), (e) and (f) of this section it would be clear that the Legislature has deliberately drawn a distinction between grant of a permit and renewal of a permit. There the appellant PTS "had not objected to the grant of a permit" to its rival CPTS and therefore could not appeal under clause (f) of Section 64. The observation as to the distinction between grant of a permit and the renewal of a permit was obiter. It may be noted that in spite of drawing the distinction in the early part of the judgment their Lordships appear to have reckoned both as identical as they observed in the later part of the judgment: "Assuming, however, that an appeal could have been brought even by a person in the position of PTS, such an appeal could not lie unless the PTS had preferred an objection to the grant of permit to the CPTS. In point of fact, no such objection was preferred by the PTS." The word "grant" in this passage can only mean renewal as the application of the CPTS and the order thereon were for renewal only.

Under the Motor Vehicles Act, a permit holder is not entitled to an automatic renewal of his permit: An application for renewal has to be made just in the manner as an application for grant of a new permit. It has to be proceeded with and disposed of just in the same way as an application by a fresh entrant. And the suitability of the applicant for renewal has to be considered along with that of new applicants for permit and unless his qualification be equal to that of the best of the contemporaneous new applicants he will not be entitled to renewal. The provision in Section 58 is "A permit may be renewed on an application made and disposed of as if it were an application for a permit........provided..........that, other conditions being equal, an application for renewal shall be given preference over new applications for permits." In our opinion the renewal of a permit is really the grant of a new permit to an existing operator, and that appears to be the gist of the observations of the Supreme Court in the decision cited above. It then follows that an order for renewal of a permit is appealable by transport operators who have opposed the renewal under clause (f) of Section 64 of the Motor Vehicles Act. We are in entire agreement with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Govindan Nair in the judgment under appeal. The appeals have no merit and are hereby dismissed in limine.