Supreme Court Cracks Down on Overloading of Trucks

In a significant judgement on November 9, 2005, the Supreme Court has quashed the issuance of Gold Card/ Tokens by the State Governments permitting overloading of trucks in excess of prescribed weight limit. The Court has mandated that the trucks found on roads carrying illegal excess load will have to offload the cargo crossing the legal weight limit. This judgement is expected to have multiple impact on various stakeholders in the trucking and automobile industry.

The apex court upheld the plea of petitioners in quashing the notifications issued by various State Governments permitting the overloading of trucks by issuance of Gold Cards/Tokens to truckers against a fixed fee. The Supreme Court Bench ordered the strict adherence of sections 113 and 114 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and the rules made thereunder. The order says that the offence of overloading of trucks cannot be allowed to perpetuate by permitting the goods carriage to proceed on its further journey with an excess load by compounding of the offence.

The Supreme Court orders states "It is indisputable that the power of compounding vests with the State Government, but the notification issued in that regard cannot authorise continuation of the offence which is permitted to be compounded by payments of the amounts fixed. If permitted to be continued, it would amount to fresh commission of the offence for which the compounding was done. The State Governments, which have not yet withdrawn the notifications, shall do it forthwith. So far as the practical difficulties highlighted are concerned, it is for the State Governments concerned to make necessary arrangements to ensure that the difficulties highlighted can be suitably remedied by the State Governments themselves without, in any way, overstepping statutory prescriptions."

The apex court refused to accept the State Governments' plea that there are difficulties in offloading excess cargo from goods carriage, which is more than the prescribed weight limit. The State Governments have been interpreting the Motor Vehicles Act on overloading of trucks in a manner in which they allowed the trucks to carryon the excess load after compounding of offence by payment of fine. It was contrary to the very letter and spirit of the law. Thus, Supreme Court has cleared any confusion, if any, about the implementation of the Act.

Implications of Court order, in brief, are:

▪	The truck rentals, though in short run, are likely to go up by 25%-30% on trunk routes
▪	The Supreme Court Order implementation will lead to efficient and optimum utilisation of truck fleet with reduced wear and tear and minimum driver fatigue on highways. The operating cost of vehicle maintenance and tyres will come down by 40%-50% and will improve the fuel efficiency of the engine, resulting in fuel saving.
▪	At present, the demand for extra heavy duty cross ply tyres, specially designed and marketed for their overloading capacities, is leading the truck tyre sales in the country. Thus, trucks operating under legal load limit will be saving on price by shifting on to high mileage tyres and consequently, it will open the door for high mileage modern radial technology tyres as against outdated cross ply tyres.
▪	The country is in the midst of building national highways under the National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) entailing an investment of over Rs. 1,60,000 crore in next 5-7 years. The Golden Quadrilateral, East-West and North-South corridors of highways are under construction. These highways are being built with huge investment to last for at least 10-12 years. However, even a 10% overloading of goods carriage in excess of prescribed weight can reduce the life of this precious national asset of roads and highways by 35%.
▪	The overloading of the trucks have created a piquant situation in the truck market in which a light goods carriage (5 ton-7.5 ton capacity) encroaches upon medium goods carriage (9 ton - 10 ton capacity), the medium truck snatches the load of 16.2 ton HCV, which in turn, encroaches on 25.2 ton truck. The chain continues upward. The implementation will encourage the reverting of trucks in large numbers to trunk routes from inter State routes as goods carriages will now not be under the stress of overloading and rampant abuse of roads.