DESHMESH CO OPERATIVE TRANSPORT Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners are All India Tourist Bus Operators who have been issued permits under Section 63(7) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as the Act). In the year 1982 one Shri D.P. Sharma,-an All India Tourist Bus Operator, filed a writ petition in the High Court of Karnataka praying that the condition imposed by the State Transport Authority while endorsing or issuing permit under sub-section (7) of Section 63 of the Act, prohibiting the bus operators from entering into any contract of hiring other than the extension or modification of a subsisting contract out. side the State of Kamataka be quashed. The Karnataka High Court held that the said condition is void because it does not allow the holders of permit under sub-section (7) of Section 63 of the Act to enter into a fresh contract of hiring even for the purpose of bringing the tourists into the State of karnataka.

(2.) An appeal was filed against this judgement of the Karnataka High Court in the Supreme Court. The Central Government had not framed rules at that time though rule making power was provided under Section 63(10) of the Act. During the pendency of the appeal in the Supreme Court, the Central Government published the draft Rules on November 15,1985. The Supreme Court passed certain interim orders on 30th January 1986 directing All India Tourist Bus Permit Holders to follow the said draft Rules. Thereafter, draft Rules were approved and published on 2nd September 1986 and, therefore, the Supreme Court by its order dated 12th September 1986 disposed of all the appeals pending before it as infructuous and did not pronounce on the correctness of the judgement of the Karanatka High Court. The Supreme Court further observed that the motor vehicle operators having All India Tourist Permits will have now to comply with the Rules made by the Central Government and vacated all the interim orders passed by it. By this writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners have challenged the validity of additional condition No. III of the Tourist Vehicles (Additional Conditions of Permit) Rules 1986 framed by the Central Government.

(3.) It was submitted by the learned counsel for the petitioner that Additional Condition No. III which requires the permit holders to either commence its journey or end its journey in the Home State with a further condition that the vehicle shall not remain outside the home State for a period of more than two months and the proviso which imposes a restriction that when the contracted journey ends outside the home State, the vehicle shall not be plied for hire within that State or from that State to any other State except the return journey to any point in home State is violative of the fundamental right guaranteed to the petitioners under Articles 14,19 (l)(d) & (g)-and 301 of the Constitution of India.