Patna High Court
Express Auto Service (Private) Ltd. vs State Of Bihar And Ors. on 12 May, 1960
Equivalent citations: AIR1960PAT537, AIR 1960 PATNA 537
Author: V. Ramaswami
Bench: V. Ramaswami
JUDGMENT Choudhary, J.
1. This is an application under Article 226 of the Constitution. The petitioner in this case is the Express Auto Service (Private) Ltd. Dumka. It appears that, by a Gazette notification, dated the 18th of December, 1956, a vacancy for a permanent bus service on the Dumka Sahebgunj route was advertised by the East Bihar Regional Transport Authority, Bhagalpur, and, in response to the said advertisement, the petitioner as well as certain other persons, including respondent No. 3, made applications for the grant of permit. The East. Bihar Regional Transport Authority, after considering those applications, passed , an order granting a permit to respondent No. 3, on the 6th of April, 1957.
The petitioner, thereafter, preferred an appeal before the appellate authority under Section 64: fa) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter to be referred to as the Act), and the appellate authority, by its order dated the 6th of May, 1958 set aside the order dated the 6th of April, 1957 of the Regional Transport Authority, and granted a permit to the petitioner for the said route. On the 24th of May, 1958, respondent No. 3 filed an application under Section 64A of the Act before the Transport Minister, who, by his order dated the 5th of October, 1958, set aside the order of the appellate authority granting the permit to the petitioner, and restored the order of the Regional Transport Authority granting the permit to respondent No. 3. Being thus aggrieved, the petitioner has presented this application in this Court.
2. Mr. P. R. Das, appearing for the petitioner, has put forward a contention that the Transport Minister had no power to make any order and no application in revision lay before him. In order to appreciate the point raised it may, perhaps, be necessary to make a reference to certain provisions of law on the subject. Section 64(a) of the Act, so far as is relevant for the purpose of the present case, lays down that any persons aggrieved by the refusal, of the State or a Regional Transport Authority to grant a permit, may, within the prescribed time and in the prescribed manner, appeal to the prescribed authority who shall give such person and the original authority an opportunity of being heard.
Section 64A was introduced in the Act by Section 59 of Act 100 of 1956, and it states that the State Transport Authority may, either on its own motion or on an application made to it, calls for the record of any case in which an order has been made by a Regional Transport Authority and a which no appeal lies, and i£ it appears to the State Transport Authority that the order made by the Regional Transport Authority is improper or illegal, the State Transport Authority may pass such order in relation to the case as it deems fit. An amendment in the Act was also made by the Motor Vehicles (Bihar Amendment) Act, 1949 Bihar Act 27 of 1950) in its application to the State of Bihar and by Section 13 of that Act another Section 64-A was introduced in the Act, which provides that the State Government may, on application made to it in this behalf, within thirty days of the passing of the order in the course of any proceedings taken under this Chapter by any authority or officer subordinate to it, call for the records of such proceedings, and after examining such records pass such order as it thinks fit.
Under Section 111 of the Act, the Central Government has been empowered to make rules, and Rules 70 and 71 so framed are very important. Rule 70 lays down that the authority to decide an appeal against an order of the State Transport Authority in respect of any of the matters mentioned in Clauses (a), (b), (c), (d), (e) (f) or (g) of Section 64 of the Act shall be such officer of the State Government or such tribunal as, the State Government by order appoint either generally or for any particular appeal or class of appeals. Rule 71 provides that the Authority to decide an appeal against any order o£ a Regional Transport Authority in respect of any of the matters mentioned in Clauses (a), (b), (c), (d) (e), (f) or (g) of Section 64 of the Act shall be the Chairman and the members of the State Transport Authority appointed by the Chairman from a penal nominated by the State Government of members of that authority.
3. The first contention of Mr. Das is that in the present case the Transport Minister appears to have dealt with the revision application under Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Central Act 100 of 1956, but he had no jurisdiction under the above provision to entertain any revision application, and he should have, therefore, dismissed the application in limine. True it is that in the impugned order, which is annexure E to the application, it has been stated in the very beginning that the petition was under Section 64A of the Act, as amended by Act 100 of 1956, but the application which respondent No. 3 filed before the Transport Minister, which is annexure D to the present application, only states the petition to have been filed under Section 64A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939.
The application does not show that it was made under Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Central Act 100 of 1956. As a matter of fact, Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the above Central Act, gives power of revision only to the State Transport Authority, and not to the State Government. The power of revision to the State Government is really given by Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Bihar Act 27 of 1950, so far as it may have application to the State of Bihar.
It is, therefore, clear that the petition of respondent No. 3, which purports to have been filed under Section 64A of the Act, must be deemed to have been filed under that section, as amended by the Bihar Act, and not by the Central Act. Where there are two sections giving revisional jurisdiction to two different authorities, an order passed by any of those authorities must be taken to have been passed under the section which gives that authority a jurisdiction to pass such an order.
In this case, therefore, the impugned order or, the Transport Minister, who, undoubtedly, has a revisional jurisdiction under Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Bihar Act, must be deemed to have been passed under that section. The quotation in the order-sheet about the petition having been filed before the Transport Minister under Section 64A, as amended by the Central Act 100 of 1956, is obviously wrong, and must be ignored. It is a well settled principle of law that the label given to a case does not determine the jurisdiction of the authority, and the authority has to apply the proper law to the case on the facts disclosed in the petition.
4. It was next contended that, under Rule 71 of the rules framed under the Act, an appeal against an order of the Regional Transport Authority lay before the Chairman and the members of the State Transport Authority appointed by the Chairman, as prescribed in that rule, and a second appeal lay against an order of the State Transport Authority, under Rule 70, to an officer of the State Government or a tribunal, as the State may appoint and it is submitted that in the present case respondent No. 3, not having filed a second appeal against the order of the State Transport Authority, could not file a revision application under Section 64A of the Act.
An argument has been put forward that, where a provision for appeal has been made under the Act, a party cannot avail of the remedy by way of revision without having exhausted his remedy by way of appeal. In my opinion, there is no substance in the second contention raised on behalf of the petitioner. Rules 70 and 71 of the rules framed under the Act prescribed the authority to decide an appeal against an original order of the State Transport Authority or of a Regional Transport Authority.
This is apparent from Section 64 (a) of the Act itself, which lays down that any person aggrieved by the refusal of the State or a Regional Transport Authority to grant a permit may prefer an appeal to the prescribed authority which, in the case of the order of a State Transport Authority, is the officer or tribunal, as the State Government may appoint under Rule 70, and, in the case of a Regional Transport Authority, is the Board of the Chairman and the members of the State Transport Authority as provided in Rule 71.
The order of refusal by the State Transport Authority is, therefore, an order passed by that authority in its original jurisdiction, and not in its appellate jurisdiction. Reading Section 64 of the Act together with Rules 70 and 71, there is no room for doubt that there is no provision for a second appeal to be filed before any authority against an order of the State Transport Authority. The view taken above gains support from a Bench decision of the Nagpur High Court in Vijai Motor Transport Association v. Mahakoshal Transport Service, AIR 1953 Nag 150, wherein it was held that there is no right of second appeal provided by the statute against the appellate orders of the appellate authority constituted under the rules framed under the Act.
5. Lastly, it has been contended that Section 64A of the Act, as amended by Bihar Act 27 of 1950, has to give way to Section 64-A of the Act, as amended by the Central Act 100 of 1956, inasmuch as both the Sections make the same provision giving revisional jurisdiction to certain authorities. It is submitted that there could not be two parallel Acts to deal with revision applications and it must, therefore," be taken that by amendment of the Act by Central Act 100 of 1956, Section 64A, as amended by the Bihar Act, stood impliedly repealed.
In my opinion, there is no force in this argument also. There is no repugnancy between the two sections of the Central Act and the Bihar Act, and they make provisions to meet different classes of cases. Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Central Act, provides for revision by the State Transport Authority only in cases in which no appeal lies; but Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Bihar Act, does not lay down any such condition for giving revisional jurisdiction to the State Government.
Again, Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Central Act, gives power to the State Transport Authority to revise an order of a Regional Transport Authority only, but the above section, as amended by the Bihar Act, gives jurisdiction to the State Government to revise the order of any authority or officer subordinate to it. It is not, therefore, correct to say that the two sections make provisions for the same remedy by two different authorities. There is thus no repugnancy in the two sections, and it cannot be legitimately urged that, by the introduction of Section 64A in the Central Act, Section 64A of the Act, as amended by the Bihar Act, stood repealed.
6. No other point has been raised. There is thus no merit in this application, which is accordingly, dismissed with costs. Hearing fee Rs. 150.
Ramaswami, C.J.
7. I agree.