M.I. Chaturvedi, J. - (1.) THIS is a petition under Article 226 of Constitution praying for the quashing of an order passed by the 1st Respondent granting temporary permits to the 2nd Respondent, and also for the issue of a writ of mandamus directing the 1st Respondent to proceed in accordance with law.
(2.) THE Petitioners are the operators of passenger buses in the district of Gorakhpur. They have been running their buses on the whole or part of the route Pharenda -Brijman Ganj -Nautanwa and Sonahuli. On the 1st and 5th Dec. 1955, the 1st Respondent granted two stage carriages. The permits were granted for a period of three months, and the 2nd Respondent was to run the two carriages on a part of the above route namely, Nautanwa to Sonahuli. The Petitioners had also applied for the grant of these temporary permits, but the order of the 1st Respondent was against them and hence they filed the present petition on 2 -3 -1956 with the prayers mentioned above. The learned Counsel for the Petitioners had urged two submissions in support of the petition. His first, submission is that the temporary permits are invalid because they have not been granted for any of the purposes mentioned in Clauses (a) to (c) of Section 62 of the Motor Vehicles Act. The second submission is that, even after the expiry of the three months' period, the 2nd Respondent has continued running the buses on temporary permits, and this was against the provisions of Section 62, inasmuch as the period for which a temporary permit can be granted is limited to four months in that section. The learned Counsel for the Respondents have controverted both the above propositions and they have further alleged that the two permits were granted only for a period of three months in December 1955, and the subsequent renewal was after the writ petition had been filed and the Petitioners therefore, in this case cannot make any complaint of events that happened after the petition had been filed in this Court. Another objection has been taken to the effect that the order passed by the 1st Respondent was appealable under Section 64(f) of the Act, and the Petitioners having failed to avail themselves of this remedy, it is not open to them to claim the reliefs sought for by them. I propose to consider the preliminary objection first and then the other points.
(3.) TEMPORARY permits were granted under Section 62 of the Motor Vehicles Act and Section 64(f) provides that any person, who has been providing transport facilities, will have a right to go up in appeal against an order granting a permit provided he opposes the grant of the permit before the Transport Authority. In the present case it does appear that the Petitioners or at least some of them had opposed the grant of the two temporary permits before the Authority concerned. That being the position, they could have gone up in appeal against the impugned order. There was another remedy open to them. But I do not think that the existence of another remedy is an absolute bar to entertaining a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. All the circumstances and the facts of the case have to be taken into consideration and, if as a result of the consideration, the Court thinks that the justice of the case requires interference, it is open to the Court to interfere with the order, even though the other remedy was not availed of by the Petitioner. In this case if the Petitioners had filed an appeal, the appeal, may not have come up for hearing for months and the entire purpose of filing the appeal would have been frustrated because the period of temporary permits would have expired after the lapse of three months. There is the further fact that, according to the admissions contained in the counter affidavit filed on behalf of the State, a clear illegality is being committed by the department and I do not think I should shut my eyes to the illegality because the Petitioners committed the mistake of not filing an appeal against the order. After a consideration of all the circumstances and facts of this case, I have come to the conclusion that the preliminary objection should not be given effect to.;