( 1 ) THIS petition is by one Sri Kashi Prasad Gupta who holds a stage carnage permit in respect of gorakhpur Gola via Khajni and Urwa route under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939. Since 1955 the strength of permits on this route was enlarged to ten. There is another route in the same area which is known by the name of Gorakhpur Gola via Khajni and Urwa Malhapur route. Its strength was two permits. As they happened to be partly identical routes the Regional Transport authority had permitted the operators on both the routes to ply on either with the effect that the strength of the two routes put together became 12.

( 2 ) THE petitioner claims that the traffic requirements of the routes did not justify the grant of 12 permits. For this reason, even though the strength of the first route had been increased from 7 to 10 in 1955, the additional permits were not granted until one was done in January 1958, second in April 1959 and the third in July 1959. Even then, in view of the insufficient traffic requirements, the buses plied in rotation so that the four buses had to remain idle on any particular date. The Transport Department of the State Government, which are running th