Amarjit Singh vs Presiding Officer on 18 November, 2009

           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 2

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