KARACHI, June 8: The provincial and regional transport authorities are competent to issue route permits in respect of all areas within their territorial limits to the exclusion of any civic agency, including cantonment boards, the Supreme Court declared in a recent judgment.

Dismissing a petition for leave to appeal by the Malir Cantonment Board against a Sindh High Court judgment, an SC bench, comprising Justices Nazim Hussain Siddiqui and Abdul Hameed Dogar, observed that the respondent route permit holder or the Sindh government or its transport authority never challenged the petitioner’s competence to take necessary measures for purposes of safety and security.

But since cantonments formed part of the territory of the province in which they were situated, the provincial road transport authority had exclusive authority to issue route permits for public transport in cantonment areas. Under no provision of law, the cantonment authorities were empowered to assume the functions of the transport authority.

The bench upheld the SHC judgment allowing a writ petition by a transporter, who operated a coach service from the Malir Cantonment to the Karachi City Railway Station. The transporter signed a three-year agreement with the garrison commander for permission to ply his coaches subject to grant of a permit by the transport authority in August 1997. However, shortly after signing of the agreement, the cantonment board advertized a public notice inviting tenders for the Superhighway-City Railway Station route via the Malir Cantonment.

The transporter already operating the route raised objections but was not heard and the cantonment authorities started impounding his vehicles.

In a letter to the regional transport authority, a cantonment official said the area falling in the Malir Garrison “is bound by boundary walls and consists of sensitive military organization and hardware and to ensure proper safety and security, people coming in and going out of the garrison should be cleared at the entry and exit points.”

The transporter approached the high court and a division bench held that the authority to grant route permits vested only in the provincial transport authority under the Motor Vehicles Ordinance. The ruling was challenged by the cantonment board in the Supreme Court.

In its order refusing leave to appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the SHC judgment and noted that the transport authority had written to the cantonment board that it was competent to take necessary measures for security without interfering with its power to regulate and grant route permits.

The court pointed out that on the one hand the cantonment board was pressing security reasons while on the other, it was inviting public tenders for the very route on which the vehicles of the respondent transporter were plying. The route permit was validly issued and extended till 2005 by the transport authority, the court held.