Case: D. Papiah Vs. Mysore State Transport Appellate Tribunal and Others

1. On the application of the appellant the Regional Transport Authority, Mandya, granted him. a contract carriage permit on February 8, 1972, valid for the entire State of Karnataka. The grant was cancelled by the Karnataka State Transport Appellate Tribunal by its order dated August 19, 1972 on appeal preferred by the third respondent, Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation. The appellant filed a writ petition in the High Court of Karnataka at Ban galore challenging the order of the Appellate Tribunal. The High Court dismissed the petition by its order dated November 29, 1974 agreeing with the Appellate Tribunal that the Regional Transport Authority, Mandya, had no jurisdiction to grant permits valid throughout the State of Karnataka in view of the first proviso to(1) of section 45 ofthe Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as the Act).

Court's reasoning:
All the decisions to which we have referred above have taken the view that by area is meant the road, the physical tract, over which the motor vehicles ply without reference to any notional line of travel. Of course, this meaning was given to the word area in the context of the provisions of the Act considered in these cases, in none of which section 45 came up for consideration. We do not however find any reason to think that area in section 45 (1) has a different connotation. Except that the territorial jurisdiction of the regional transport authorities is fixed in terms of geographical area-district wise in the State of Karnataka-area in that wider sense is irrelevant to the purposes of the42 prohibits the use of a transport vehicle in a ny public place except in accordance with the conditions of a valid permit. A transport vehicle includes a motor vehicle used for the carriage of passengers [section 2(33) and section 2(25). Public place has been defined by section 2(24) of the Act as "road, street, way or other place, whether a thoroughfare or not, to which the public have a right of access, and includes any place or stand at which passengers are picked up or set down by a stagedo not find it possible to accept this contention. Assuming that a contract carriage could be used in places which are not really roads, the fact remains that a contract carriage being a motor vehicle is intended for use upon roads, and any casual use of it in places other than roads is not decisive on the interpretation of the word area. The prohibition against the use of transport vehicles in public places which are not roads serves to repel a possible claim that for using a motor vehicle in places which cannot be called roads no permit was necessary. We hold therefore that the word area in the first proviso to section 45(1) of the Act means the area of motorable roads within the territorial jurisdictio n of a regional transport authority. The Regional Transport Authority, Mandya, held that it had within its jurisdiction the largest area of motorable roads in the State of Karnataka, and this finding has not been disturbed by the appellate tribunal. The appellate tribunal thought that the expression "motorable roads" was vague as the area comprising of motorable roads would be changing from time to time", but the jurisdiction of a regional transport authority to grant an inter-regiona l permit depends on the existing area of motorable roads when an application for a permit is made.In the course of arguments before us doubts were expressed on the reasonableness of a provision which requires an application for an inter-regional permit to be made to the regional transport authority of the region in which the major portion of the proposed route or area lies when section 63 of the Act provides elaborate checks and lays down conditions for the validation of permits for use outside the region in which it has been granted. It was submitted that in view of the provisions of section 63 there was no point in insisting on the application being made to the Regional Transport Authority of any particular region. We see the logic of this submission, but this is a matter of policy on which the court has no say. However, the policy itself does not appear to have been stated very clearly. On the provisions as they are it is difficult to say that the construction put forward on behalf of the third respondent is altogether implausible. It is also true that there can be practical difficulties, whichever interpretation was adopted. This being the position we should have thought that instead of leaving the law in such a slippery state, the State should clarify it by appropriate legislation so that the law may be clear and easily ascertainable by the concerned section of the public.