- (1.) This is an application on behalf of the Lakshmi Sugar and Oil Mills Ltd. Hardoi, Under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The applicants are carrying on business of manufacture and sale of crystal sugar in their sugar Factory at Hardoi. They have got ten motor vehicles on which they carry the goods to the station and partly bring the cane from the field. It is not the case of any party that they are doing any business for tarrying goods for anybody else. Their vehicles are meant for the transport of sugar-cane and sugar in the course of their trade and business carried on by themselves. Out of ten vehicles held by them four vehicles have been granted permanent private carrier permits, while the other six have been granted "departmental private carriers" permits. On these six vehicles they have been charged under the Motor Vehicles Taxation Act duty which is payable on public carriers and not on private carriers. These permits also had been treated as temporary permits issued for a period of four months and they were again reserved after the expiry of every four months.
(2.) The applicants say that they are doing their business of carrying sugar cane from the fields by means of these transport vehicles and they cannot be termed as public carriers and therefore they should have been granted permanent private tamers permits. They made representations to the Regional Transport Authority who did not agree with their contention. Their there was an appeal under the Motor Vehicles Taxation Act which was also dismissed. Aggrieved by those decisions the applicants have come up to this Court in writ petition.
(3.) The contention on behalf of the Regional Transport Authority is that under a Government Notification of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture if the Sugar Factory owners were to carry their own cane from the field then they are entitled to a rebate of three pies per maund per (sic) subject to a minimum of three annas per maund which the sugar factory is entitled to deduct out of the minimum sugarcane price of Rs. 1/7/- per maund fixed on the said Notification payable to the producer. The contention of the counsel for the Regional Transport Authority is that since this rebate is granted for the purposes of carrying goods it should be deemed that it is in the nature of hire of the motor vehicles and the before the Regional Transport Authority was justified in considering these vehicles as public carriers and this Court should not interfere with that decision.;