Article 14 equality in stage carriage permits requires uniform treatment of similarly placed operators on overlapping routes

Curtailment of stage carriage permits was held to offend Article 14 where similarly situated operators on overlapping routes were left unaffected. The discriminatory treatment arose from omission or error in supplying complete permit particulars to the deciding authority, but that oversight could not justify unequal treatment under the approved scheme. The Court did not strike down the scheme as a whole; instead, it removed the discriminatory effect by quashing the curtailment conditions against the petitioners to the extent they denied equal treatment, until comparable restrictions were applied uniformly to all similarly placed operators.

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Issues: Whether curtailment of the petitioners' stage carriage permits, while other similarly situated operators were left unaffected, amounted to hostile discrimination violative of Article 14, and whether the discriminatory restriction on the overlapping portion of the routes was liable to be quashed.

Analysis: The approved scheme under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 brought the petitioners' routes into overlap with notified routes, and their permits were curtailed accordingly. However, other operators holding permits in the same class and on similarly overlapping routes were allowed to continue without curtailment or cancellation. The discrepancy resulted from omission or error in furnishing complete particulars of all valid permits to the authority deciding objections. The governing principle applied was that discrimination under Article 14 cannot be justified merely because it arose from oversight by a governmental agency, where the unequal treatment produces a direct denial of equal protection. The Court declined to strike down the entire scheme and adopted a corrective approach to remove the discriminatory effect as between similarly situated operators.

Conclusion: The curtailment conditions imposed on the petitioners' permits were unconstitutional to the extent they treated them differently from similarly situated operators, and were quashed until equal treatment is extended to all similarly placed operators.

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