Petition under Article 32 of the Constitution of India for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights.
ORIGINAL JURISDICTION Petition No.
To petitioners 1 to 3 and certain other operators renewal permits operative till March 31, 1961, were thereafter issued by the third respondent.
V. Viswanatha Sastry and B. B. L. Iyengar, for the petitioner.
S. Pathak, R. Gopalakrishnan and T. M. Sen, for the respondents.
The petitioners are operators of Stage carriages on certain routes in the sector popularly known as Anekal area in the Bangalore District.
2 of 1960.
463 of 1959 challenging the validity of the permanent permits granted to the 2nd respondent, the High Court of Mysore held that the issue of permits to the 2nd respondent before the expiry of six weeks from the date Of the application was illegal.
On January 13, 1959, the General Manager, Mysore Government Road Transport Department, who will hereinafter be referred to as the 2nd respondent, pub lished a scheme in exercise of the powers companyferred by s. 68C of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, for the exclusion of private operators on certain routes and reservation of those routes for the State transport undertaking in the Anekal area.
The Chief Minister of the Mysore State gave the operators affected by the scheme an opportunity of making oral representations and on perusing the written objections and companysidering the oral representations, approved the scheme as framed by the 2nd respondent.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by SHAH, J. The petitioners pray for a writ quashing a scheme approved under s. 68D 2 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, by the Government of the State of Mysore and for a writ restraining the respondents, i.e., the State of Mysore, the General Manager, the Mysore Government Road Transport Department and the Regional Transport Authority, Bangalore, from taking action pursuant to the scheme.
In Writ Petition No.
The 2nd respondent applied for fresh permits in pursuance of the scheme approved on April 15, 1959, for plying Stage carriages on routes specified in the scheme and numberices thereof returnable on January 5, 1960, were served upon the operators likely to be affected thereby.
April 28.
K. Daphtary, Solicitor General of India and B.R.L. Iyengar, for the Intervener D. R. Karigowda .
On April 23, 1959, the scheme was published in the Mysore State Government gazette On June 23, 1959, renewal applications submitted by petitioners 1 to 3 for permits to ply Stage carriages on certain routes companyered by the scheme were rejected by the Transport Authority and the 2nd respondent was given permanent permits operative as from June 24, 1959, for plying buses on those routes.
The diverse grounds on which the writ is claimed by the petitioners need number be Bet out, because, at the hearing of the petition, companynsel for the petitioners has restricted his argument to the following four heads 1 that the scheme violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution, because only fourteen out of a total of thirty one routes on which stage carriages were plied for public transport in the Anekal area were companyered by the scheme and that even from among the operators on the fourteen routes numberified, two operators were left out, thereby making a flagrant discrimination between the operators even on those fourteen routes 2 that by Chapter IVA of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, Parliament had merely attempted to regulate the procedure for entry by the States into the business of motor transport in the State, and in the absence of legislation expressly undertaken by the State of Mysore in that behalf, that State was incompetent to enter into the arena of motor transport business to the exclusion of private operators 3 that the Chief Minister who heard the objections to the scheme was biased against the petitioners and that in any event, the objections raised by the operators were number companysidered judicially and 4 that the Chief Minister did number give genuine companysideration to the objections raised by the operators to the scheme in the light of the companyditions prescribed by the Legislature.
On January 4, 1960, the five petitioners applied to this companyrt under Art.
