Judgment

R.M. SAHAI, J.- Whether notification of a route under Section 68-C of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (for short the Act) excluding completely or partially private operators from plying on the notified route results in excluding the operators of inter-State route as well is the question of law that arises for consideration in these appeals.

2. Although the controversy appears to have been settled long ago yet the circumstances in which the dispute has been continuing till now and has reached this Court may be narrated. The appellants are permitholders of stage carriages operating on inter-State route having starting point at one or the other place in State of Karnataka and termini in the State of Tamil Nadu. Some of them are operating on the intra-State route since before the route was notified by what has come to be known as Anekal Pocket Scheme of 1959. But their plying was not affected as the scheme was treated as of partial exclusion or not applicable to inter-State route by this Court. Now they are aggrieved by cancellation of their permits as it overlaps the route notified by publication of scheme in 1959 under Section 68-C of the Act. The validity of this scheme was uph