- (1.) 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.
(2.) The petitioners are operators of Stage carriages on certain routes in the sector popularly known as "Anekal area" in the Bangalore District. On January 13, 1959, the General Manager, Mysore Government Road Transport department who will hereinafter be referred to as the 2nd respondent published a scheme in exercise of the powers conferred 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 considering the oral representations, approved the scheme as framed by the 2nd respondent. 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 covered 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. In Writ Petition No. 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. To petitioners 1 to 3 and certain other operators renewal permits operative till March 31, 1961, were thereafter issued by the third respondent. 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 notices thereof returnable on January 5, 1960, were served upon the operators likely to be affected thereby. On January 4, 1960 , the five petitioners applied to this court under Art. 32 of the Constitution for quashing the scheme and for incidental reliefs.
(3.) The petitioners claim that they have a fundamental right to carry on the business of plying stage carriages and the scheme framed by the 2nd respondent and approved by the State of Mysore unlawfully deprives them of their fundamental right to carry on the business of plying stage carriages in the Anekal area. The diverse grounds on which the writ is claimed by the petitioners need not be set out, because, at the hearing of the petition, counsel 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 thirtyone routes on which stages carriages were plied for public transport in the Anekal area were covered by the scheme and that even from among the operators on the fourteen routes notified, 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, Parilament 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 registration 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 objctions to the seheme was biased against the petitioners and that in any event, the objections raised by the operators were not considered judicially; and (4) that the Chief Minister did not give "genuine consideration" to the objections raised by the operators to the scheme in the light of the conditions prescribed by the Legislature.;