- (1.) THE first petitioner claims to be a Trade Union of owners and pullers of jin-rickshaws registered under the Trade Unions Act, 1926. The second petitioner claims to be its General Secretary while the third and the fourth petitioners claim to be a owner and a puller of jin-rickshaw respectively. They are aggrieved by the inaction of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (hereafter the Corporation) and its authorities in renewing certificates of enlistment under section 199 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 (hereafter the k. M. C. Act ).
(2.) AT the outset Mr. Mukhopadhyay, learned Junior Standing Counsel representing the State of West Bengal has raised a preliminary objection with regard to maintainability of the writ petition. According to him, an earlier writ petition filed by the first petitioner claiming similar relief is pending before this Court and hence the petitioners are disentitled to any relief in this petition.
(3.) MR. Ghosh, learned Counsel for the petitioners submitted that the issue raised in this writ petition is not directly and substantially in issue in the previously instituted writ proceedings and, therefore, the objection is misconceived. According to him, the earlier petition was filed at a time when the provisions of the Calcutta Hackney-Carriage Act, 1919 (hereinafter the Act of 1919) governed plying of rickshaws on the city roads of Kolkata. Now that it has been amended by the Calcutta Hackney-Carriage (Amendment) Act, 2006 (hereafter the Act of 2006), there has been a change in the cause of action and there being no identity of issues, the writ petition would be maintainable.;