Intra-court appeal from Article 226 is maintainable regardless of overlapping supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227.

The Appellant applied for three stage carriage permits in Rajasthan pursuant to a 2015 government notice.

The State Transport Authority (STA) rejected his application for the Bikaner–Ganganagar route on June 14, 2016, erroneously claiming he already held a permit.

This was affirmed by the State Transport Appellate Tribunal (STAT) on the ground that the Appellant failed to surrender a "previously issued permit," though the specifics of such permit were not recorded.

The Appellant filed a writ petition before the Rajasthan High Court under Article 226.

A Single Judge dismissed the petition, ruling that because the Appellant offered only one vehicle chassis for three applications, the STA was justified in allocating only one route.

On appeal, a Division Bench dismissed the intra-court appeal as non-maintainable, holding that orders arising from Article 227 (supervisory) jurisdiction do not permit a second tier of appeal under Rule 134 of the High Court Rules.

1. Whether an intra-court appeal is maintainable against a Single Judge's order when the jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution is invoked to challenge a statutory tribunal's order.

2. Whether possession of a physical vehicle at the time of application is a mandatory prerequisite for the grant of a stage carriage permit under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.

The Court clarified the distinction between Article 226 (judicial review) and Article 227 (supervisory jurisdiction), citing Hari Vishnu Kamath v. Syed Ahmad Ishaque and Nagendra Nath Bora v. Commissioner, Hills Division to establish that a litigant may challenge a tribunal's order under either or both articles.

The Court applied the principle from L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India that tribunal orders are amenable to Article 226/227 jurisdiction.

Section 71 (post-1994 amendment) of the MV Act, which removed the cap on the number of permits an individual can hold.

Rule 5.11 of the Rajasthan Motor Vehicles Rules, 1990, which allows for the production of registration marks after the sanction of an application.

The Court found the Division Bench erred in treating the writ petition as exclusively under Article 227.

It held that if a petitioner correctly invokes Article 226 and the High Court Rules permit intra-court appeals from such orders, the appeal is maintainable regardless of whether the tribunal's order could have also been challenged under Article 227.

On merits, the Supreme Court noted that the STA and STAT failed to provide mandatory reasons for rejection as required by Section 80 of the MV Act.

The Court critiqued the Single Judge for substituting a new reason—the "single vehicle" theory—which was not part of the original rejection.

It interpreted Rule 5.11 and Form R.S. 5.1 to mean that an applicant need not possess a vehicle at the time of application; they only need to produce the registration certificate within one month of the permit's sanction.

It held that the intra-court appeal was maintainable since Article 226 was invoked and that the lack of a ready vehicle is not an absolute bar to a permit application under the Rajasthan MV Rules.

The Court revived the appeal before the STAT (Appeal No. 168/2019) with directions to decide it within six months and issued a directive to all High Courts to consider framing rules to assign Article 226/227 matters to specific Benches.