Judgment

B. K. MUKHERJEA, J.: The appellants in these two analogous appeals, along with many others, have been carrying on the business of plying motor vehicles as stage carriages on hire on the Bulandshahr-Delhi route from a number of years past. The running of these vehicles has been regulated so long by the Motor Vehicles Act of 1939 which provides, inter alia, for granting of driving licences, the registration of vehicles and exercising control over transport vehicles through permits granted by Regional Transport Authorities. Section 42(3) of the Act exempts transport vehicles, owned by or on behalf of the Central Government or the Provincial Government from the necessity of obtaining permits unless the vehicles were used in connection with the business of an Indian State Railway.

It appears, that some time after 1947 the Government of U.P. conceived the idea of running their own buses on the public thoroughfares. They first started running buses only as competitors with the private operators but later on they decided to exclude all private bus owners from the field and establish a complete State monopoly in respect to the road transport business. They sought to achieve this obj