IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT MADRAS
Mr. Justice Satyanarayana Rao and Mr. Justice Rajagopalan, JJ.
Nadar Transports, Tiruchirapalli, by its Managing Partner
Versus
The State of Madras, represented by the Secretary to Government, Home Department, Madras,
L.P.A. No. 72 of 1952.
Decided On : 08 April 1952
The appellant, Nadar Transports, Tiruchirapalli, and the third respondents Shanmugham Pillai, were competitors for permits to run buses on two routes, route 1-A and route 8. In the first instance, the Regional Transport Authority issued two permits to the appellant for route 1-A and one to the respondent for the same route and granted one permit in route 8 to the appellant. This order was subsequently cancelled and there was a fresh notification on the 1st October, 1950, in which the number of the buses to run in route 8 was increased from one to two. The Regional Transport Authority granted five permits to the appellant for routes 1-A and 8, i.e., three permits to ply three buses in route 1-A and two permits to ply two buses in route 8. Before the Regional Transport Authority, the third respondent did not make any representations against the grant of the permits to the appellant. The order granting five permits to the appellant was the subject-matter of an appeal by the third respondent to the Central Road Traffic Board, which modified the order of the Regional Transport Authority by granting two permits for route 8 to the respondent and restricting the appellant’s right to three permits in route 1-A. There was an application to revise this order to the State of Madras under section 64-A and that application was unsuccessful. Thereafter the appellant approached this Court with an application to issue a writ of certiorari quashing the proceedings of the Government. The matter was heard by Subba Rao, J. and before him three questions were raised on behalf of the appellant:-(1) Shanmugam Pillai, the third respondent did not apply for permits, and therefore, the Central Road Traffic Board had no power to issue two permits to him; (2) As Shanmugham Pillai did not file any written representation before the Regional Transport Authority under section 57(4) of the Motor Vehicles Act he had no right of appeal against that order under section 64 of the said Act; (3) the order of the Regional Transport Authority is vitiated by an error apparent on the face of the record. On all the points the learned Judge decided against the appellant. He found on the first point that in fact the two applications filed by the respondent were treated as applications for two permits and the enquiry proceeded on that basis. This point however is not now pressed before us. On the second point he found that the appellant had an undoubted right of appeal as he was an aggrieved party under section 64-A of the Act. On the third point he was not satisfied that there was any error apparent on the face of the record to attract the jurisdiction of this Court to quash the order of the Government by a writ of certiorari.
Before us Mr. K. Bhashyam, the learned advocate for the appellant, argued only two points. In the first place he urged that there was an error apparent on the face of the record; and secondly that the respondent had no right of appeal against the order of the Regional Transport Authority to the Central Road Traffic Board, and in any event as he made no representations before the Regional Transport Authority objecting to the grant of a permit to the appellant, he was precluded from raising any ground attacking the order of the Regional Transport Authority as being invalid and unjust.
As regards the first point, it was claimed that the statement in the order of the Central Road Traffic Board, that the appellant was a new
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