Judgment

KOSHAL, J.:- This appeal by special leave is directed against a judgment dated the 8th August, 1980 of a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court dismissing a petition instituted by the 18 appellants under Article 226 of the Constitution of India in which the reliefs prayed for were-

(a) that the order dated the 19th July, 1969 (hereinafter referred to as the impugned order) passed by the Deputy Secretary (Judicial), Government of Uttar Pradesh, rejecting all the objections filed by the appellants to a scheme (hereinafter called the impugned scheme) published on the 21st January, 1961 in the Government Gazette of Uttar Pradesh under Section 68C of the Motor Vehicles Act 1939 (for brevity, the Act) be set aside as illegal, and

(b) that the notification published in the said Gazette dated the 7th November, 1970 and approving the impugned scheme (for short, the 1970 notification) be quashed.

2. The notification dated the 21st January, 1961 declared that the State Government was of the opinion that "for the purpose of providing an efficient, adequate, economical and properly co-ordinated road transport service, it is necessary in the public interest that road transport services on the routes mentioned at Item No. 2 of the annexed schemes should be run and operated by the State transport undertaking to the complete exclusion of other persons" and the impugned scheme was being published on that account under Section 68C of the Act read with Rule 4 (1) of the Uttar Pradesh State Transport Services (Development) Rules, 1958 (for short, the Rules). The impugned scheme envisaged the plying of buses on the route Gorakhpur-Khajni Gola via Dhuriapur and Malhanpur exclusively by the State Transport Undertaking (hereinafter described as the S.T.U.) and invited all persons whose interest was affected by it to file objections thereto within 30 days of its publication in the Official Gazette.

The impugned scheme was later on modified by different notifications and three allied routes were brought within its purview. Supplementary objections to the scheme as amended were put forward by persons interested.

Shri S. K. Bhargava, Deputy Secretary (Judicial) to the U. P. Government rejected all the objections and approved the scheme through the impugned order, in pursuance of which the 1970 notification was published in the Government Gazette.

3. On behalf of the 18 appellants (out of whom appellants Nos. 1 to 17 are transport operators who were plying their buses on the routes covered by the impugned scheme while appellant No. 18 is the Motor Operators Association, Gorakhpur) the following grounds were put forward before the High Court in support of the prayers made :

(i) The impugned scheme was vitiated by mala fides inasmuch as it was the outcome of action taken by Shri Hanumant Singh Negi, Deputy Transport Commissioner, U. P., who had threatened Shri Bajrangi Lal, Pairokar for one of the petitioners, namely, Shri Kashi Prasad Gupta, that the disputed route would be nationalised in case the latter pursued in the SC the matter which had earlier been decided against him by the High Court.

(ii) The impugned order did not deal at all with objections of a personal nature which had been filed by the appellants and which, inter alia, indicated that the scheme would operate to the great disadvantage of the appellants all of whom were plying buses on the disputed route and had invested huge sums of money for that purpose.

(iii) The impugned order did not record specific findings on any of the objections of a "personal nature" and was liable to be quashed for that reason alone.

(iv) It was incumbent on the author of the impugned order to compare the services rendered by the appellants with those to be rendered by the S.T.U. That not having been done, the impugned order and the 1970 notification were both vitiated.

4. The High Court went at length into the question of mala fides and rejected the contention of the appellants in that behalf mainly on the ground