Modi, J. - (1.) THIS is a special appeal against the order of the learned Single Judge of this Court dated the 30th of May, 1958 passed in writ case No 97 of 1958 by which the appellant's writ application was dismissed summarily by the following order: - "the order passed by the Regional Transport Authority is eminently reasonable one under the circumstances of the case although the order of the Appellate Authority refusing to entertain the appeal is erroneous No injustice has been caused to the applicant requiring interference in writ. Reject".
(2.) THE material facts leading to this appeal may be shortly stated as follows. The appellant along with fourteen other persons was a permit holder running buses on the Hindumalkot-Ganganagar route. These persons were also allowed to run their buses upto a place called Sadhuwali in the Rajasthan State. There was also a route from Sadhuwali to Abhore in the East Punjab State which was operated by permit holders from the said neighbouring State. The Transport Authorities of both these States sometime in 1957 agreed to make the entire route from Hindumalkot to Abhore an interstitial route and further agreed to allow permits in a certain proportion. In pursuance of this decision the Regional Transport Authority, Jodhpur invited applications for the new route. Opposite parties Nos. 4 to 10 applied for the enlarged route and the present appellant and fourteen other persons who were previous operators on the Hindumalkot Ganganagar route also applied. The appellant and his associates filed objection against the grant of permits to opposite parties Nos. 4 to 10 before the Regional Transport Authority. Eventually, on the 29th of October, 1957, the said authority granted in all 27 permits for the new route out of which 20 permits were granted to the appellant and the previous operators, and seven more permits were granted to opposite parties Nos. 4 to 10. Against this order, it is admitted, that a writ application was filed by one Ghamandiram in this Court which was rejected on the ground that he had an alternative remedy by way of appeal to the Appellate Tribunal of the State Transport Authority. The appellant then went in appeal to the Appellate Tribunal and it appears that his appeal was admitted and an order of interim say was granted to him. Then the appeal came up before the Tribunal on the 30th of April, 1958 for final orders. The Tribunal dismissed the appeal as incompetent. What they said in this connection was this "upon hearing the learned counsel and examining the accord of the case which was placed before us at the time of hearing, we feel that no appeal lies under sec. 64 (f) of the Act as appellant and respondents stand on the same footing i. e. , both are new grantees on this route, as such no right accrues to the appellant to come here as an existing operators. Therefore, we reject the appeal and vacate the stay order granted on 21st November, 1957". Thereupon the appellant filed the writ application out of which the present appeal arises. We have already cited in extenso the order by which that writ application was dismissed. The contention of the learned counsel for the appellant is that by the order of the Appellate Tribunal dated the 30th of April, 1958, the appellant was deprived of his right of appeal on entirely erroneous grounds, and that the learned Single Judge particularly when he was himself disposed to hold that the order of the Tribunal refusing to entertain the appeal was wrong, the present appellant's writ application to this Court should not have been dismissed, and his prayer is that the application should have been allowed and the Tribunal directed to dispose of the appeal on merits. We have given our earnest and careful consideration to the matter and we are satisfied that the Tribunal fell into a patent error when it came to the conclusion that no appeal lay against the order of the Regional Transport Authority to it. The only reason which seems to have weighed with the aforesaid authority in coming to the conclusion to which it did appears to be that in its view the present appellant and the other previous bus operators stood on the same footing as the Contesting respondents inasmuch as neither class of these operators previously held any license to run their buses on the Sadhuwali-Abhore route. Apart from the legal aspect of the matter, to which we propose to address ourselves presently we consider it proper to| point out that it was not merely the route from Sadhuwali to Abhore (the route advertised was Hindumalkot to Abhore) for which applications were invited by the Regional Transport Authority, Jodhpur in 1957 in pursuance of the Transport Authority of this State as well as the neighbouring State of Punjab to make the entire route from Hindumalkot to Abhore an interstitial route. It cannot possibly, be contested that, so far as the route from Hindumalkot to Ganganagar is concerned, the appellant and his class of operators were previous permit holders, it is not disputed that they upheld the permits on that route upto March, 1959. In this state of affairs it is hardly correct to say that the appellant and the other previous permit holders on the Hindumalkot-Ganganagar route stood on the same footing as the respondents Nos. 4 to 10 who had for the first time been granted permit over this area in 1957. Be that as it may, the principal question for determination in this appeal is whether the appellant had a right of appeal under sec. 64 of the Motor Vehicles Act No. IV of 1939. The relevant clause of that section namely 64 (f) is in these terms: - "any person being a local authority or police authority or an association which or a person providing transport facilities who, having opposed the grant of a permit, is aggrieved by the grant thereof or by any condition attached thereto'". The contention of the learned counsel for the contesting opposite parties is that although the appellant was a person who provided transport facilities and he had also opposed the grant of a permit to the said respondents, it cannot be said that he or the other previous bus operators on the Hindumalkot Ganganagar route were "aggrieved" by the grant of the permits in question to the former, within the meaning of the clause cited above. Developing this argument learned counsel further pointed out that what would be said at the most was that the appellant or the other previous bus operators were perhaps aggrieved in so far as the new permits were granted to the respondents for the Hindu-malkot-Ganganagar route, but this in no way involved the further position that they could also be said to be really aggrieved in so far as the route from Sadhuwali to Abhore is concerned. We find it difficult to accept this argument as correct. In the first place the route for which the applications were invited by the Regional Transport Authority in the present case was the entire route from Hindumalkot to Abhore and therefore, it would not be correct to dissect these routes into two as the learned counsel has argued. In the second place we cannot also accept the argument that the appellant was not aggrieved by the grant of the permits in question for the extended portion of the route. In this connection we wish to invite reference to sub-sec. (1) of sec. 47 of the Motor Vehicles Act. The material portion of this sec. runs as follows: - "sec. 47 (1) A Regional Transport Authority shall, in considering an application for a stage carriage permit, have regard to the following matters, namely; - (a) the interests of the public generally; (b) the advantages to the public of the service to be provided including the saving of time likely to be effected thereby and any convenience arising from journeys not being broken; (c) the adequacy of other passenger transport services operating or likely to operate in the near future, whether by road or other means, between the places to be served; (d) the benefit to any particular locality or localities likely to be afforded by the service; (e) the operation by the applicant of other transport services, including those in respect of which applications from him for permits are pending; (f) the condition of the roads included in the proposed route or area; and shall also take into consideration any representations made by persons already providing passenger transport facilities by any means along or near the proposed route or area or by any association representing persons interested in the provision of road transport facilities recognised in this behalf by the State Government, or by any local authority or police authority within those jurisdiction any part of the proposed route or area lies". It is menifest from the plain language of this section that whenever applications for a stage carriage permit are invited and made and these come up for consideration, the authority concerned has been placed under a duty to take into consideration representations made in this connection not only by persons already providing passenger transport facilities on the proposed route or area but also by persons who may be providing such facilities in the neighbouring area. This clearly involves the position that it would be open to such persons who may be providing transport facilities in the neighbouring area to raise objections to the grant of new permits, and whenever such objections have been made a duty has been laid upon the Regional Transport Authority to take them into consideration. It follows as a corollary from what we have said above that whenever such persons who provide transport facilities in the neighbouring area have opposed the grant of a permit and their objections have been disallowed they would be naturally aggrieved by the grant of such permits and it cannot possibly be said that the grant of such permits cannot really be a source of grievance to them because these persons did not hold any permits for the entire area for which the permits are sought to be granted. In this view, naturally, we are categorically of the opinion that clause (f) of sec. 64 did and does give a right of appeal to the applicant against the order of the Regional Transport Authority, Jodhpur dated the 29th of October, 1957, and the order of the Appellant Tribunal cannot be sustained in law when it came to the conclusion that there is no such right. It is next contended by learned counsel for the respondents that even if we come to the conclusion that there was a right of appeal available to the appellants, we should not interfere because the order passed by the Regional Transport Authority was a correct one having regard to all the circumstances of the case. We cannot accede to this argument. A right of appeal is a vested right and the deprivation of such a right, in our opinion; where it exists, is a serious matter and should not be permitted. We would refer in this connection to a Bench decision of this Court in the case of Heeralal vs. The State of Rajasthan (1) to which one of us was a party, where the following observations were made : - "we need scarcely add in this connection that a right of appeal is a vested right, and we should be extremely loath to deprive a litigant of such a right where it arises on the plain language of the relevant provisions of law. We should also like to point out in this connection that by declining to go into the merits of the case the Appellate Tribunal of the State Transport Authority patently failed to exercise jurisdiction in a case where it certainly had that. It is well established at this date by the decisions of this Court among which we may refer to Hiralal's case (l), to which we have already referred above and by the decisions of their Lordships of the Supreme Court among which we would refer to the case of Hari Vishnu Kamath vs. Ahmad Ishaque (2) that a writ of certiorari will we issued: - (1) for correcting errors of jurisdiction, as where an inferior court or tribunal exceeds its jurisdiction or acts without jurisdiction or fails to exercise the jurisdiction it possesses, and (2) where the court or tribunal acts illegally in the exercise of its undoubted jurisdiction such as where it decides without giving an opportunity to the parties to be heard, or violates the fundamental principles of natural justice, or (3) where there is an error which is apparent on the face of the record, which, in other words. means that the error does not merely amount to a wrong decision but where it is gross or patent and such an error occurs when it is based on clear ignorance or disregard of the provisions of law. It is also well established that where a court issues a writ of certiorari, it acts in the exercise of a supervisory and not appellate jurisdiction so that broadly speaking it is not for the court issuing the writ to review findings of fact reached by the inferior court or tribunal. We hold accordingly and are further disposed to hold the view that on these principles the learned Single Judge should have set aside the order of the Appellate Authority when it had failed to exercise jurisdiction which was properly vested in it by law, and the Tribunal should have been directed to deal with the appeal on the merits. Now a word as to the merits of the case. We wish to say only this much that it is not for us to determine them in the exercise of our extraordinary jurisdiction, the more so when the Tribunal to which the determination of this duty has been assigned by law has failed to perform it. While it is strenuously contended on behalf of the contesting respondents that the order passed by the Regional Transport Authority, Jodhpur was eminently just and reasonable, it is equally strenuously contended on behalf of the appellant that the said order was highly improper having regard to all the circumstances of the case to some of which our attention was invited but we consider it both unnecessary and undesirable to make any mention of them beyond saying that according to their submission it would lead to unnecessary wastage of the permit holders' monies and energy as there was really no scope for such a large number of vehicles being allowed to run on this route. As already pointed out above the jurisdiction of this Court in a matter like this is really supervisory and not appellate. We, therefore, think that a decision between these rival contentions is primarily and essentially a matter for the Appellate Tribunal which is the competent authority in this respect and which it should have determined but failed to do, and not for us. For the reasons mentioned above, we allow this appeal and set aside the order of the learned Single Judge and also quash the order of the Appellate Tribunal dated the 30th of April, 1958 by which it dismissed the appellant's appeal before it as incompetent, and we further direct that the Tribunal shall proceed to rehear the appellant's appeal before it and dispose of it on the merits. Having regard to all the circumstances of the case, however we would leave the parties to bear their costs in this Court. . ;