Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Bench judgement on allotting minibus permits in Madurai district

Staff Reporter

Enlists procedures to be followed by Regional Transport Authority

MADURAI: In order to clear the confusion over allotting minibus permits in Madurai district, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has delivered a detailed judgement enlisting the procedures to be followed by the Regional Transport Authority (District Collector).

Disposing of a batch of writ petitions, a Division Bench, comprising Justice P.K. Misra and Justice Prabha Sridevan, said the Government had formulated an approved scheme for Madurai district by an order dated November 17, 1999. The scheme provided for a maximum of 250 minibus permits in the district.

The permits were granted to stage carriage and minibus operators who operated in rural areas of districts where no stage carriage services were provided. The route length should not exceed 20 km with an overlapping distance not exceeding four km on the routes where stage carriages were operating.

Initially, the RTA granted 244 permits of which 12 permits were surrendered and as of now, there were 81 fresh applicants against 18 vacancies. Some of these applicants had filed cases before the Tribunal and also moved writ petitions and writ appeals before the Madras High Court.

Despite the orders of the High Court to follow first-come-first-served basis, confusion prevailed over allotment of permits and hence the Division Bench now took up the present cases.

The Bench clarified that if an application was returned for defects and if it was resubmitted within the stipulated time fixed by authorities or within seven days from the date of return, then the original date of applications should be considered to fix seniority. But, if the application was resubmitted after the lapse of the prescribed date, then it would be treated as a fresh application.

In other type of cases where the applicants had filed a new route map because their earlier application was rejected on the ground that the particular route was sufficiently served, then the date of application for the new route should be taken into account for reckoning the seniority, even if the application was submitted within the time frame.

But, in other instances, where the applications were returned on the ground that the distance on served sector exceeded four km and the application was resubmitted with a modified route in the given time, then the date of original application should be considered for fixing seniority.

As regards disqualification and the manner in which the authority should consider disqualification, the Bench said the RTA should strictly follow Rule 167 of the Tamil Nadu Motor Vehicles Rules.

On the dispute over the allotment of many permits by Regional Transport Officer (North) and less number of permits by RTO (South), the Bench said, "It is for the sake of convenience the area is bifurcated and two RTOs are given the power to grant permits; it is not for this court to allocate the proportion in which each of the authorities shall issue permits."

The authorities were directed to fix the seniority of 81 applicants as per the directions and to grant permits within eight weeks.

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