Regional Transport Officer vs A. Vinayagam

S.P. Bharucha, C.J.—These two Appeals arise upon the common Judgment and Order delivered by the learned Single Judge upon two Writ Petitions, thereby the two Writ Petitions were made absolute and the deposits made by the Writ Petitioners in each case were directed to be refunded.

The Writ Petitioners own tourist vehicles. They were being operated at the relevant point of time upon the authority of Special Permits issued u/s 63(6) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as ''the Act''). It was found, when the vehicles were checked by the motor vehicles authorities within the State of Karnataka, that they were carrying tourists from the State of Karnataka. The vehicles were seized on the basis of the instructions issued by the Commissioner of Transport by the Transport Authorities of the State of Karnataka and were released only upon the Writ Petitioners making certain deposits. The Writ Petitioners filed applications for refund of the deposits. After the same were disallowed, Writ Petitions seeking such refund came to be filed. As aforesaid, the learned Judge made the Writ Petitioners absolute and directed refund.

It was submitted before us by Mr. Dattu, learned Government Advocate, that the Regional Transport Officer at Chittoor in the State of Andhra Pradesh had no authority to grant to the Writ Petitioners the Special Permits u/s 63(6) of the Act empowering them to carry passengers collected from within the State of Karnataka. In this behalf he relied upon the Judgment of a learned Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in G. Shaikh Shavalli, Uravakonda and Others Vs. The Secretary, Regional Transport Authority and Another, The learned Judge in that case noted that the prayer in the Writ Petition before him was that the petitioners should be granted Special Permits u/s 63(6) of the Act by the Transport Authorities of the State of Andhra Pradesh enabling them to take their buses empty into outside States and to pick up passengers there and transport them to the end of their voyage and empty them back at their starting points in those States and drive the buses back to the places within the State of Andhra Pradesh empty. The learned Judge took the view that the granting of such a Special Permit was not within the competence of the Regional transport Authority of the State of Andhra Pradesh. In his view, an examination of Section 63(6) of the Act showed that what was contemplated to be granted under that Section was a permit to run a Contract Carriage. u/s 2(3) of the Act "Contract Carriage" is defined to mean a motor vehicle which carries a passenger or passengers for hire or reward under a contract expressed or implied for the use of the vehicle as a whole from one point to another point without setting down along with the line of route passengers not included in the contract. The concept of contract carriage was introduced in the Act to subserve the needs of group travel. When a group of people travel together by a transport vehicle, the contract carriage did the job. But the purpose behind granting a contract carriage permit was to cater to the needs of the genuine traveling public as the purpose of the other provisions of the Act is. The provisions of the Act, therefore, authorised the Regional Transport Authority to grant these contract carriage permits to enable group travel to be conducted within their respective regions. For this purpose of the Act, the State is divided into various regions. Either in granting or refusing contract carriage permits the Act requires the transport authorities to keep the needs of the travelling public in view. In other words, a transport authority would be acting illegally in granting any permit for mere asking and without being satisfied of the existence of a genuine transport need. It could never have been within the contemplation of the Act that the Regional Transport Authority of Anantapur or Kurnool should assess the travelling needs of the people of Bangalore or Markara. The travelling needs of those far off places can only be assessed and met by the local Regional Transport Authorities of those places. The Regional Transport Authorities of the State of Andhra Pradesh were legally incompetent to grant such permits because they were not charged by the Act to look after the travelling needs of the public living outside their region. They were not in a position to assess the genuine travelling needs of the public living in those far off lands. Without any proper assessment of such need being made, no Regional Transport Authority is empowered by Section 63(6) of the Act or any other provision of the Act to grant any contract carriage permit. Any attempt on the part of these Regional Transport Authorities to make any such assessment would immediately put them on collision of authority with the Regional Transport Authority in those States.

According to Mr. Dattu, the Decision in Shaikh Shavalli has been approved in Achyut Shivram Gokhale Vs. Regional Transport Officer and Others, and he relied in this behalf upon the observations of the Supreme Court that "the conclusions reached in the two Andhra Pradesh High Court Decisions are also correct."

It is seen that the learned Single Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court has dealt with a Special Permit issued u/s 63(6) of the Act as if it were a contract carriage permit. The Supreme Court in the aforementioned Judgment in paragraph 4 has observed that a Special Permit issued u/s 63(6) of the Act has some of the features of a contract carriage permit but it was not the same as a contract carriage permit. The two are issued under different provisions of the Act, namely Sections 51 and 63(6) of the Act. The Supreme Court added that while the contract carriage permit issued by the Regional Transport Authority of one region is not valid in any other region unless the permit has been countersigned by the Regional Transport Authority of the other region as provided u/s 63(1) of the Act, a Special Permit issued by the Regional Transport Authority of a region u/s 63(6) of the Act is valid in any other region or State without the countersignature of the Regional Transport Authority of the other region or the State, as the case may be.

Referring to Shaik Shavalli''s case and another Judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, the Supreme Court observed that it was enough in these Decisions to deal with one of the common features that existed in a contract carriage permit and in a Special Permit and the ratio of these Decisions depended on that common feature. There was, the Supreme Court said, no necessity to examine all the features of the two kinds of permits referred to above in order to determine whether they were the same for all intents and purposes. In neither of the two Decisions the features that distinguished a contract carriage permit from a special permit had been considered.

We find it difficult, in the circumstances, to take the view that the Supreme Court Judgment aforementioned affirms the view of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in G. Shaikh Shavalli, Uravakonda and Others Vs. The Secretary, Regional Transport Authority and Another,

As we read Section 63(6), we find no limitation of the kind suggested on behalf of the appellants. We also find that a learned Single Judge of this High Court has in M.K. SATYANARAYANA RAO v. THE ASST. REGIONAL TRANSPORT OFFICER AND ORS. 1987(1) BLJR 148 considered the Judgment in Shaikh Shavalli''s case and, on a plain reading of Section 63(6) of the Act, held, in our view rightly, that the grant of a Special Permit to operate as a contract carriage within the region or outside the region or outside the State was not inhibited by anything except the Rules made under the Act. No such Rule inhibiting the grant of permits by a Regional Transport Authority of one State to operate the vehicle registered in that State wholly in the region of another State had been brought to his notice. Therefore, as long as a Special Permit was valid without countersignature in any part of India when granted by one Regional Transport Authority for plying within the region or inter-regionally or outside the State, it could not be said that the exemption to it was not available when it was demonstrable that the permit holder had paid tax in his State and displayed the distinguishing mark prescribed.

Having regard, therefore, to our interpretation of Section 63(6) of the Act itself, these Appeals must fail.

Our attention is also invited by the learned Counsel for the respondents to the fact that the Regional Transport Authority at Chittoor had issued the Special Permits u/s 63(6) of the Act in those cases upon being ordered to do so by an interim order in a Writ Petition filed in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh and that it was therefore not open to the appellants to challenge the validity of the action in this Court. We find it unnecessary to go into that aspect of the matter.

The Writ Appeals are accordingly dismissed. No order as to costs.