PRAGNESH CHINUBHAI JOSHI Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner has prayed for a direction to the Regional Transport Office ("RTO" for short), preventing the said Authority from issuing recovery notices of unpaid RTO tax to different vehicle owners. It appears that there was a major scam in the city of Surat where nearly 600 vehicles were registered without payment/short payment of life time RTO. It appears that individual vehicle purchasers tendered their payments to the agent of dealer from whom such vehicles were purchased. Admittedly, such amounts were never deposited with the RTO authority. Thus the authorities were in loss of crores of rupees under the scam. The petitioner further prayed that proper inquiry and investigation may be made regarding the role of RTO officers in this scam.

(2.) LEARNED advocate Shri Abhishek Mehta for the petitioner stated that there are large number of persons who have or would be receiving such notice from the RTO, Surat. Present petition in the nature of public interest litigation may therefore, be entertained instead of forcing all such persons to approach individually. Such persons due to economic reasons, in any case, are unable to individually file their petitions. He further submitted that in any case the authorities have not examined the role of any of the officers in this scam though chargesheet has been filed against the dealer as well as the agent concerned.

(3.) INSOFAR as the main cause in the petition is concerned, same cannot be categorised in the nature of public interest. Individual owners/purchasers must pursue their remedies in law. Question of their responsibility to pay RTO tax to the Government can be decided in facts of each case. Additionally, it may also prima facie appear that any payment of tax tendered to a person who is an agent of the dealer and in turn, therefore, would be acting as an agent of the purchaser, would not amount to payment of tax to the Government. However, we do not express any final opinion on this aspect because various issues are still pending before the authority. With respect to substantial prayer of full inquiry into the possible role of any of the Government officers, we are of the view that the Government must undertake a proper inquiry and ascertain whether any of its officers had played any active role in the scam which resulted into loss of crores of rupees to the public exchequer. Prima facie, we find it difficult to believe that such a large scale scam have been carried out without connivance from inside. We are also of the opinion that inquiry for incident which took place in the year 2012, is sufficiently delayed.