The Regional Transport Authority has the power to grant more than one stage carriage permit for a single route and can lawfully consider the year of manufacture of the stage carriages when considering applications for permits.

ORDER:- In this Special Civil Application, the petitioners pray for a writ (1) quashing the order of the respondent No. 1 dated October 10, 1974, (2) directing the respondents Nos. 1 and 7 to issue a stage carriage permit on the Panaji-Poona inter-State routes to the petitioners for a duration of five years or such period as the Court may deem fit and (3) prohibiting the respondents from acting upon and/or giving effect to the order of the respondent No. 1 dated October 10, 1974 and the order of the respondent No. 7 dated October 17, 1975.

2. The petitioners carry on business in providing stage carriage facilities from Goa and nearabouts to various places, on inter-State routes and so on. On September 1, 1964, the State Transport Authority, the first respondent herein granted to the petitioners, stage carriage permit under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act") and the Rules made thereunder, in respect of the inter-State routes from Betim to Poona and back for a period of five years. On the expiry of the permit on or about January 6, 1969, the first respondent renewed the permit for a further period of five years. After the expiry of the second permit the petitioners again applied on March 8, 1973, for the renewal of the permit. A similar application for renewal was made on August 29, 1973. The application for renewal made by the petitioners and other applications for new permits on the said route which is known as Panaji-Poona route received by the first respondent were duly notified in the gazette and objections, if any, were invited in respect thereof under S. 57 of "the Act". On January 29, 1974, the first respondent published an advertisement inviting applications all afresh for the stage carriage permit on the Panaji-Poona route. It was disclosed in the said advertisement that the petitioners need not apply since they had already made an application for renewal. The first respondent took into account all the applications that were received by it in pursuance of the said advertisement including the application of the petitioners for renewal of the permit and after considering all the said applications, rejected the application of the petitioners for renewal by the Order dated October 10, 1974 and instead, granted five stage carriage permits for a period of three years to the respondents Nos. 2 to 6. The five permits were sent to the State Transport Authority for counter-signature. The petitioners protested before that Authority. Thereafter the petitioners filed an appeal to the seventh respondent against the order of October 10, 1974. The appeal was dismissed by the order dated July 19, 1975.

3. The three points raised before the learned Chief Secretary, the seventh respondent in this petition, were set out by him as follows:-

"(i) Whether it is proper on the part of the respondent No. 1 to grant permit for the Panaji-Poona route to 5 persons instead of 1;

(ii) Whether it is proper for the respondent No. 1 to reject the case of the appellants on the basis of the year of manufacture of the vehicles, and

(iii) Whether the appellant is entitled to get preference."

4. Before me an additional point was raised, namely, whether the granting of a permit to the petitioner would amount to giving him the monopoly of transport business on the Panaji-Poona route. In the last paragraph of the judgment of the Chief Secretary which is challenged before me, the Chief Secretary has made a passing remark regarding the monopoly, to the effect that "it is necessary to say that the appellant by running on this route from 1964 appears to get monopoly on this route". These remarks were attacked by Dr. Naik, counsel for the petitioner on the ground that they are unfounded. The learned Government Advocate states that there is no material on which any finding could be given regarding monopoly. I need not therefore consider the question whether a stage carriage permit granted to the petitioner would create a monopol