GOVERNMENT OF KARNATAKA Vs. BRIGADE ENTERPRISES P LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WRIT petitioners are all persons who are dealers as the expression occurs in Section 2(12) of the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act, 2003 [for short, the Act] and also dealers who are registered under Section 22 of the Act.

(2.) PETITIONERS have a common grievance and complaint against the validity of the penalty orders, which penalty has been imposed on the petitioners under the provisions of sub-section (1) of Section 72 of the Act. Such penalty is levied on the petitioners either for their failure to file returns of the turnover, which is a periodic return to be filed every month, in terms of Section 35 of the Act or for their failure to have paid the tax, which they have collected and which had become payable within the permitted time, as stipulated in sub-section (1) of Section 35 of the Act.

(3.) IN all the above writ petitions, while the differing facts in each of the petitioners' case are narrated, several permutations and combinations of the basic grounds, as indicated above, are urged in support of the writ petitions praying for the relief of declaration that the provisions of sub-section (1) of Section 72 of the Act are unconstitutional and the consequential relief of quashing the penalty orders.