MAHABIR RICE MILLS HLRAGANJ, PRATAPGARH THROUGH ITS MANAGING PARTNER SHRI RAKESH PRATAP SINGH AND ANOTHER Vs. KRISHI UTPADAN MANDI SAMITI, PRATAPGARH AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners, in this ground of petitions, have questioned the realisation of market fee by the Krishi Utpadan Mandi Samiti under the provisions of U. P. Krishi Utpadan Mandi Adhiniyam as also the realisation of additional market fee under the said Adhiniyam read with U. P Ordinance No. 40 of 1983. Their contentions are that (i) Mandi Samiti does nut render any service and there bring no quid pro quo, it cannot realise any fee from the petitioners (ii) the levy of additional market fee by U. P. Ordinance No. 40 of 1983 was illegal and no additional market fee can be realised, (iii) they purchase paddy, convert it into rice and sell it. Since the Mandi fee has already been paid by them at the time of purchase of paddy, no Mandi fee is liable to be paid on the sale of rice obtained from the said paddy.

(2.) So far as the question of quid pro quo is concerned, the petitioners cannot contend that because the Samiti was not rendering actual service, the petitioners are not liable to pay any fee as this contention has already been negatived by the Supreme Court. In Sreeniwase General Traders Vs. State of Andhra Pradesh, AIR 1983 SC 1246, it was obscene that the traditional view that there must be actual quid pro quo for a fee has undergone a sea change in the subsequent decisions. The distinction between a tax and a fee lies primarily in the fact that a tax is levied as part of common burden, while a fee is for payment of a specific benefit or privilege although the special advantage is secondary to the primary motive of regulation in public interest. It was also pointed out by the Supreme Court in that decision that there was no generic difference between a tax and a fee. It was observed that both were compulsory ex actions of money by public authorities and that a levy in the nature of a fee did not cease to be of that character merely because there was an element of compulsion or coercive ness present in it now was it a postulate of a fee that it must have direct relation to the actual service rendered by the authority to each individual, who obtains the benefit of the service. The Supreme Court also drew attention to the increasing realization that the element of quid pro quo in the strict sense was not always sue quo non for fee. Nor was the element of quid pro quo necessarily absent in every tax.

(3.) It may be pointed out that in Sreenivas case (supra) the Supreme Court had an occasion to consider its own Judgment in Kewal Krishna Puri Vs. State of Punjab and others, AIR 1980 SC 1008 and laid down that an insistence upon a good and substantial portion of an amount collected account of fee, say in the neighbourhood of two thirds of the fourths, being shown with reasonable certainty as having been spent for rendering services in the market to the payer of fee could not be a rule of universal application and that it was a rule which had necessarily to be confined to the special facts of Kewal Krishna Puri's case AIR 1980 SC 1008. Otherwise, it was further observed, it would affect the validity of marketing legislation undertaken throughout the country.