JAIN TRANSPORT AND GENERAL TRADING CO Vs. STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner Jain Transport and General Trading Company and a large number of other persons, who are petitioners in the connected writ petitions, carried on the business of plying motor vehicles and stage carriages on hire in the State of Uttar Pradesh. Their rights have been regulated under the Motor Vehicles Act of 1939. The petitioner held permit Nos. 8-A and 9-A under the Act for running stage carriages on Aligarh-Iglas-Mathura route. These permits were granted to the petitioner in the year 1954 and under the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act were valid upto August 1957. Sometime in the year 1947 the State Government conceived the idea of running their own buses on the public thoroughfares. In the beginning they decided to run as competitors with private bus owners but later on they decided to run in exclusion of private bus owners. This was sought to be done with the aid of the Motor Vehicles Act. Under the provisions of Section 42(3) of the Motor Vehicles Act, the State Government had not to obtain permits for their own vehicles and could run any number of carriages they liked. In order to carry out this object of State monopoly the Transport Authorities started cancelling the permits issued to the private operators and refusing to renew their permits. In the year 1949 in pursuance of the aforesaid policy the transport authorities granted only temporary permits to the stage carriage permit holders. In 1950 the petitioner was also served with a notice by the Regional Transport authority to the effect that the Government intended to run their own stage carriages, that the petitioner would not be allowed to run his stage carriages and that the petitioner's application for the renewal of the permit was not to be considered. Thereafter the petitioner along with a number cf other bus operators filed a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution for issue of an appropriate writ against the unauthorised use of the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act by the Government. That petition was disposed of by a Full Bench of this Court. Thereafter as the State Government, intended to have the exclusive right to operate road transport services within its territory, the U.P. Transport Act II of 1951 was passed which became law from 10-2-1951. The constitutionality of this Act was also challenged later on by means of a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution in this Court. This Court by its decision dated 17-11-1953 held that the U. P. Transport Act II of 1951 was a constitutional Act and rejected the writ petition.

(2.) An appeal was filed against the decision of this Court to the Supreme Court and also petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution were directly filed in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court by its judgment dated 13-10-1954 allowed the appeal and declared the U.P. Transport Act II of 1951 unconstitutional. Thereafter a further assistance was sought of the Legislation and U.P. Road Transport Services (Development) Act IX of 1955 hereinafter called the impugned Act was passed by the U. P. Legislature. This was published in U.P. Gazette of March 24, 1955. Under Section 3 of the aforesaid Act a notification dated 17-5-1955 which was published in U. P. Gazette dated 21-5-1955, was issued. A scheme was promulgated under the provisions of the Act which directed that certain route specified therein would be exclusively served by stage carriages of the State Government and all private operators were excluded from those routes. Subsequent to that, a notification under Section 4 of the Act dated 3-11-1955 was published on 12-11-1955, formulating schemes under the Act. There was a scheme formulated for the Aligarh-Iglas-Mathura route from which the present petitioner was excluded from plying stage carriages and the permits held by the petitioner were transferred to other routes. Certain objections were fried to this scheme. It is not necessary at this stage to deal with further facts relating to the consideration of the objections but ultimately a notification under Section 8 of the impugned Act, dated 30-6-3956, was published in the U.P. Gazette of 23-6-1956. A further notice dated 25-6-1956 under the signature of the Secretary, Regional Transport authority, was received by the petitioner intimating that the petitioner's stage carriages under permits 8A and 9A will cease to ply on the disputed route or portion thereof and will be transferred to other route. On these facts the present petition was filed challenging the constitutionality of the U.P. Transport Services (Development) Act IX of 1955.

(3.) In this petition and the other connected petitions the main contention of the petitioners is that the aforesaid Act is unconstitutional and it is convenient to dispose of all these writ petitions so far as this common question is concerned by one judgment. A number of other points have been raised separately in each of these petitions and all those points will be considered when the individual petitions are considered. The constitutionality of the Act has been attacked on the following grounds:-