Gangeshwar Prasad, J. - (1.) THESE are two special appeals against the judgment of a learned Single Judge of this Court by which he dismissed a writ petition filed by the appellants for quashing an order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal U. P.
(2.) THE circumstances which led up to this petition may be briefly stated. In December 1960 Baharaich- Rupaidiha route was advertised by the Regional Transport Authority, Gorakhpur and applications were invited by it for permanent stage carriage permits. The route was a new one and the number of permits to be granted for it had been fixed at four. The appellants and respondents Nos. 3 and 4 applied for permit along with many other persons. The applications received in response to the advertisement came up for consideration before the Regional Transport Authority on April 15, 1961. On that date the Regional Transport Authority decided to raise the number of permits to be issued for the route from four to six and granted permits as follows: One permit to Shiv Singh appellant No. 1 jointly with Param Hans Singh; one permit to Narain Ram appellant No. 2; one permit to Har Saran Dass appellant No. 3; one joint permit to Mohd. Khatib Ahmad Siddiqi appellant No. 4, and Zainduddin Ahmad appellant No. 5; one joint permit to Abdul Majid and Mohammad Bashir; and one joint permit to Onkar Mal Lakshmi Narain Maheshwari. The applications of respondents Nos. 3 and 4 were rejected and no permit was granted to them. The grantees of the last two permits did not, however, lift their permits which were, consequently revoked by the Regional Transport Authority on September 14, 1961. Subsequently, by a resolution dated January 8, 1962 the Regional Transport Authority deleted the name of Param Hans from the permit issued to him jointly with Shiv Singh appellant No. 1. The parties differ as to the reason for the deletion, but the position in any case was that the four permits granted for the Baharaich- Rupaidiha route came to be held by the appellants, the first three holding one permit each and the remaining two holding a joint permit. Against the order of the Regional Transport Authority granting these permits to the aforesaid ten persons in the manner indicated above two appeals were filed, appeal No. 209 of 1961 by respondent No. 3 and appeal No. 332 of 1961 by respondent No. 4. When the appeals came up for hearing before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal it appears to have been urged on behalf of the appellants that irrespective of anything else in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in Abdul Mateen v. Ram Kailash Pandey, AIR 1963 SC 64 the order of the Regional Transport Authority was invalid because it could not have raised the number of permits from four to six. What the learned counsel for the respondents to the appeals actually or in effect said in regard to the above contention is a matter on which the parties are not agreed. However, by its order dated May 15, 1963 the State Transport Appellate Tribunal set aside the order of the Regional Transport Authority and directed it to fill the vacancies according to law. The material portion of the order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal -- and that is the only portion dealing with the merits of the appeal -- is as follows: "It was argued by learned counsel for the appellants when this matter came up for hearing on the 9th May, 1963 that in view of the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court reported in AIR 1963 SC 64, the order of the R. T. A. made at their meeting held on the 15th April, 1963, is invalid and should be set aside. There is no objection from the opposite party. The order of the R. T. A. is, therefore, set aside and it is directed to fill the vacancies according to law." 2A. The main grounds on which the order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal was challenged in the writ petition were that the decision of the Supreme Court in Abdul Mateen's case, AIR 1963 SC 64 was misconstrued and misapplied by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal, and that, at any rate, two of the permits having not been taken out and having been subsequently cancelled the order of the Regional Transport Authority was no longer open to any objection. The learned Single Judge did not decide the questions raised in the aforesaid grounds of challenge because, in his opinion, the writ petition had 'run up against an objection which should preclude its consideration on the merits.' The objection was that the order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal had been passed upon the consent of the petitioners, and, upholding that objection, the learned Judge observed: "The impugned order could be said, in the circumstances to have been passed upon the consent of the parties. That being so, I am not inclined to hear the petitioners against the order of the Appellate Tribunal. I am fortified in my decision by the view taken by this Court in Satya Pal Khetra Pal v. State Transport Appellate Tribunal U. P. Lucknow, AIR 1965 All 242." The learned counsel for the appellants, in his arguments before us, stressed the aforesaid grounds of the writ petition and further urged that the order passed by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal should be regarded as having been passed not merely upon the consent of the parties but also upon the Tribunal's own misconception of what has been laid down by the Supreme Court in Abdul Mateen's case, AIR 1963 SC 64, that in conceding that in view of the decision in the above case the order of the Regional Transport Authority was invalid and had to be set aside, the counsel for the present appellants (who were respondents in the appeal before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal) was obviously mistaken in law and the concession could not therefore preclude the appellants from challenging the order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal, and that in any case it was the duty of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal to examine for itself the applicability of the said decision to the case and it could not be relieved of that duty by the concession made by the counsel for the present appellants. Before proceeding to consider the questions raised by the learned counsel, however, it is necessary to dispose of certain technical and procedural matters connected with these appeals, As noted above respondents Nos. 3 and 4 had filed separate appeals against the order of the Regional Transport Authority but both the appeals were disposed of by a common order by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal. Against that order the appellants filed one single writ petition. Before the learned single Judge hearing the petition a preliminary objection to the maintainability of the petition was taken by respondents Nos. 3 and 4 on the ground that it was not open to the petitioners to join together in one petition and, at any rate, the order disposing of the two appeals could not be challenged by a single petition. The view that the learned Judge took on the objection was that since there were four applications for permit by the petitioners, one by each of the first, second and third petitioners and one jointly by the fourth and fifth petitioners, the order disposing of each appeal would be an order in four records, and as there were two appeals it must be held that there were in all eight records. The petitioners were, however, permitted by the learned Judge to pay the court fee required for eight writ petitions, and the writ petition was decided after the said court fee had been paid. The appellants preferred only one special appeal (No. 234 of 1966). During the hearing of the said appeal there was again a preliminary objection on behalf of the respondents that a single appeal was not maintainable. The learned counsel for the appellants did not concede that a single appeal was not maintainable, but he asked for a fortnight's time to enable him to file another special appeal by way of precaution. The time asked for was allowed. Another special appeal (No. 553 of 1966) was then filed by the appellants but this was done eight days after the expiry of the time allowed by the Court. Along with special appeal No. 553 of 1966 the appellants filed an application for condoning, under Section 5 of the Limitation Act, the delay in filing it, stating that the appellants were under the bona fide belief that one appeal would be competent because the judgment of the learned single Judge was in one writ petition and there was only one judgment by which the petition was dismissed. The respondents were granted three weeks' time to file a counter-affidavit but no counter-affidavit was filed. In the course of arguments addressed to us on behalf of the respondents after the filing of special appeal No. 553 of 1966 it was not contended that the appellants were not entitled to the benefit of Section 5 of the Limitation Act nor was it urged that more than two appeals ought to have been filed against the judgment of the learned single Judge. We have, however, to decide the objection and to determine whether the appeals are competent and entertainable.
(3.) THE initial question in that connection is whether there were, as the learned single Judge held, eight records in respect of which the applicants prayed for a writ of certiorari or there was only one record. To us it appears that both before the R. T. A. and before the State Transport Appellate Tribunal there was one single record, and the order passed by the Tribunal was in respect of one single record even though it disposed of two appeals in each of which the grantees of four separate permits were arrayed as respondents. The claim of no applicant for permit could be considered in isolation and without reference to the claims of the other applicants. By the very nature of its task the Regional Transport Authority was called upon to choose between the applicants by judging the relative claims of all of them together and it was only upon a comparative assessment of the suitability of air the applicants that the permits could be granted. In these circumstances the record relating to the grant of permits was, in our opinion, only one record and it was not split up into as many as the number of applicants nor further split up into two records in respect of each grantee of a permit by the fact of two separate appeals having been filed by two unsuccessful applicants. We are also of the opinion that the appellants could have filed a joint writ petition and it was not necessary that each of them should have filed a separate petition. The State Transport Appellate Tribunal did not at all consider the respective claims of the parties before it to the grant of permit and it only directed the Regional Transport Authority to fill the vacancies according to law by setting aside its order, The order of the State Transport Appellate Tribunal was, therefore, not merely one which affected all the appellants equally but was also an indivisible order giving rise to a joint grievance to the appellants and, therefore, to a joint interest in all the applicants to have the grievance redressed by means of a writ quashing the order.;