HC restores Indo-Canadian Bus Service permits to Delhi Airport
Chandigarh, February 10: On Friday, the Punjab and Haryana high court has ordered restoration of bus permits of three buses of Indo-Canadian Bus Service. Earlier, the Congress government just ahead of the Assembly elections, this has been cancelled on January 7, 2022. The buses were running between Amritsar and Delhi airport.
According to reports it was found that, the passengers were being picked from different boarding points en-route such as Phillaur, Ludhiana etc and that the firm was using its vehicles as a stage carriage by stopping the same en-route to pick up passengers, which was in violation of conditions for contract carriage permits.
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Recently, they approached high court claiming that the contract carriage buses ferry tourists and NRIs between Amritsar and Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi on the basis of permit as well as authorisation granted under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.
The court said that there was no official order to stop doing business on a contract carriage to pick up or set down passengers who are included in the contract. “The petitioner prepared the list well before the starting of journey, of all the passengers who are included in the contract along with the points from where they were to be picked up as per their convenience.
Therefore, by picking up these passengers en-route, the petitioner cannot be said to have operated its vehicle as a stage carriage in violation of its permit,” the bench of justice Raj Mohan Singh ruled.
It further said that the firm does not run its buses, the tourists who travel the buses have a prior contract and they are charged a fixed contractual amount for the whole of the journey such as Amritsar-New Delhi, it said adding that tourists, however, can select a boarding/contact point for pick up in the route as per their convenience.
“Neither any other passenger, who does not have a prior contract with the petitioner is picked up during the journey, nor any tourist is charged different fares for various stages of the journey,” it asserted referring to 2021 rules.
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- With inputs from agencies
