DIVISIONAL LEVEL COMMITTEE Vs. SAHU STONE CRUSHING INDUSTRIES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Delay condoned.

(2.) Special leave granted.

(3.) The short question which the learned Judges dealt with at the hearing of the petition before the division bench was with regard to the interpretation of Ss. (5 (c) of Section 4-A of the U. P. Sales Tax Act (as inserted by Act 28 of 1991 (hereinafter called "the Act"). The provision as it stood at the relevant point of time has been extracted in the judgment of the division bench. It would appear that the High court while interpreting this provision went into the question as to whether the requirements of the said provision were mandatory or directory. It felt impelled to go into this question because it saw a discrimination violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, in that, the requirement that the new unit must be registered under the Factories Act, 1948 was likely to create a discrimination because some new units may be registered earlier than the others because of bureaucratic delays. The High court says that the provision is ultra vires the Constitution for two reasons, namely, (I) that the said provision is capable of discriminating between those units in which registration is granted under the Factories Act quickly and those units in which there is a delay in grantingregistration and (2 that the provision is arbitrary and unreasonable. On the first question, the High court observes: