IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.12361 of 2009 Date of decision: 18th November, 2009 Amarjit Singh … Petitioner Versus Presiding Officer, State Transport Appellate Tribunal Punjab and another … Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA Present: Mr. Pardeep Garg, Advocate for Mr. Raj Kaushik, Advocate for the petitioner. KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA, J. (ORAL) Two authorities, i.e. State Transport Commissioner and the Appellate Authority have held that route has not been formulated by the State Government, for which petitioner has made a request. A Division Bench of this Court, in ‘Kesar Singh v. State Transport Commissioner, Punjab, Chandigarh and others’ Civil Writ Petition No.3932 of 2007 decided on March 12, 2008, has held as under: “Further, the route, on which the extension has been sought, is not a formulated route and is not covered by the Notification dated 22.2.2005, which was issued by the State Government in exercise of Clause (ca) of sub-section (3) of Section 68 of the Act. The purpose of issuing the said Notification was to avoid any threat being caused by the operators of the mini bus permits to the operators of the regular stage carriage permits. This fact has not been disputed by the learned counsel for the petitioner that the route on which the extension has been sought is not a formulated route. In our opinion, as per the provisions of sub-section (3) of Section 80 of the Act, an application for extension or alteration Civil Writ Petition No. 12361 of 2009 of route shall be treated as an application for the grant of a new permit, and if the government has formulated the route of the mini buses by issuing a notification dated 22.2.2005 under Section 68(3)(ca) of the Act, then no extension of the route can be granted contrary to the said notification. Since the proposed extension of the route does not fall under any of the formulated routes prescribed in the aforesaid notification, therefore, in our opinion, the Appellate Tribunal has rightly come to the conclusion that the extension of the route having been allowed by the Regional Transport Authority is in violation of the notification dated 22.2.2005 as also the provisions of Clause (4) of the modified Transport Scheme dated 21.10.1997. In view of the aforesaid factual and legal position, we do not find any merit in this petition and the same is hereby dismissed.” This Court cannot take a contrary view than the one formulated by the Division Bench of this Court. Hence, there is no merit in the present writ petition and the same is dismissed. [KANWALJIT SINGH AHLUWALIA] JUDGE November 18, 2009 rps 2