Ajit Singh v. State of Rajasthan
Background
A bus operator from Bikaner applied for stage carriage permits on three routes; his application for the Bikaner-Ganganagar joint route was rejected by the State Transport Authority without any recorded reason, on the stated ground that he already held another permit (a route that was never even specified in the order). His statutory appeal failed, and a Single Judge of the Rajasthan High Court dismissed his writ petition on a different, unraised ground: that one vehicle could not serve two routes. His further intra-court appeal was thrown out by a Division Bench, which held such appeals aren't maintainable when a case originates from Article 226 writ jurisdiction, without properly examining whether his petition had actually been filed under Article 226 or Article 227.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court found the Division Bench had wrongly assumed the writ petition was filed under Article 227 (supervisory jurisdiction) when it was actually filed under Article 226 (writ jurisdiction), making the intra-court appeal maintainable after all, and gave a detailed doctrinal explanation of the difference between Articles 226 and 227, cautioning High Courts against "bench-hunting" abuses and recommending clearer procedural rules. On the merits, since there is now no statutory cap on the number of permits one operator can hold (an old cap having been repealed), and possession of a ready vehicle at the time of application is not legally mandatory, the Court found both the STA's unreasoned rejection and the Single Judge's flawed reasoning were unsustainable. It set aside all the lower orders and directed the Transport Appellate Tribunal to reconsider the appellant's permit appeal within six months, applying the correct legal principles.
Lesson Learnt
Government transport authorities must give actual, recorded reasons when rejecting a permit application, and courts should not invent new grounds to justify such rejections that the authority itself never relied on; separately, litigants and courts must be careful and explicit about whether a challenge to a tribunal's order is brought under Article 226 (writ) or Article 227 (supervisory) jurisdiction, since it affects whether a further in-house appeal is even available.