Applicant duty bound to make full and true disclosure of all relevant facts.

The petitioner and the fourth respondent were rival applicants for a stage carriage permit to ply buses on he Coimbatore-Thathamangalam route. The Regional Transport Authority granted a permit to the fourth respondent on 18th February, 1952. The appeal by the petitioner against that grant preferred to the Central Road Traffic Board was rejected on 2nd June, 1952. The petitioner unsuccessfully invoked the revisional powers of the Government, who rejected his petition on 9th September, 1952. To set aside these orders the petitioner presented this application under Article 226 of the Constitution. The application was presented on nth December, 1952.

A portion of the Coimbatore-Thathamangalam route lay within the limits of the Madras State and the rest was in Travancore-Cochin. Each State had to grant a permit for the portion of the route that lay in that State, and unless the same person was given permits by both the States, a continuous service without subjecting the travelling public to the inconveniences of transhipment, could not be maintained.

The petitioner’s case was that on the date the Regional Transport Authority, Coimbatore, granted the permit to the fourth respondent, preferring him to the petitioner, only the petitioner had a permit for the Cochin section of the Coimbatore-Thathamangalam route, and that the fourth respondent had no such permit. Two of the several factors to be taken into account by the Regional Transport Authority in deciding to whom a permit should be granted were specified in section 47(1) of the Motor Vehicles Act;

(a) “the interest of the public generally;” and

(b) “the advantage 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”.

Though it was section 47(1)(a) that was specifically referred to in the affidavit by the petitioner, I am taking both section 47(1)(a) and (1)(b) into account. The petitioner’s contention was hat, if the interest of the public were to be the criterion, only the petitioner should have been granted the permit and not the fourth responent. The further contention of the petitioner was that the Regional Transport Authority, the Appellate Authority and the Revisional Authority, in ignoring that the interest of the public lay in the granting the permit to the petitioner, acted without jurisdiction and also that the error was apparent on the face of the record.

Learned counsel for the fourth respondent contended that the rule nisi that had been granted to the petitioner ought to be discharged without any enquiry into the merits of the case pleaded by the petitioner, because the petitioner had obtained the rule ex parte without a full disclosure of the relevant facts. Learned counsel for the fourth respondent charged the petitioner with suppressing material and relevant facts in the affidavit on the basis of which the petitioner obtained the rule nisi.

That the obligation of a person invoking the special writ jurisdiction of a Court is to make a full and true disclosure of all relevant facts is a well settled proposition of law. In Rex v. Kensington Income-tax Commissioners, Princess Edmond De Polignac, Ex Parte1, Reading C.J., laid down,

“Where an ex parte application has been made to this Court for a rule nisi or other process, if the Court comes to the conclusion that the affidavit in support of the application was not candid and did not fairly state the facts, but stated them in such a way as to mislead the Court as to the true facts, the Court ought, for its own protection and to prevent an abuse of its process, to refuse to pro-ceed any further with the examination of the merits. This is a power inherent in the Court, but one which should only be used in cases which bring conviction to the mind of the Court that it has been deceived. Before coming to this conclusion a careful examination will be made of the facts as they are and as they have been stated in the appl