JAMNADAS PRABHUDAS Vs. COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this reference we are concerned with a lease executed by the assessee on 30 -5 -1940, by which he gave a rent farming contract to a particular party and under that contract he received a sum of Rs. 14,000 per month in respect of the various properties covered by the rent -farming contract. The question that the Tribunal has raised on this reference is whether the assessee is entitled to claim the sums paid as municipal property tax under Section 9 (1 (iv), Income -tax Act and the sums paid as urban property tax under either Section 9 (1) (iv) or Section 9 (1) (v) of the Act ?

(2.) NOW this Court has taken the view that these amounts are not permissible deductions under Section 9 of the Act, New Piece Goods Bazar Co., Ltd. Bombay v. Commr. of Income -tax, 49 Bom. L. R. 620. The Supreme Court took a different view and came to the conclusion that they were permissible deductions: New Piece Goods Bazar Co Ltd. v. Commr. of Income -tax, Bombay, 52 Bom. L. R. 764. Therefore, if nothing more had happened and if the judgment of the Supreme Court had stood, we would have been bound to answer this question in favour of the assessee. But the Union Govt. intervened and passed an Ordinance No. XXVIII [28] of 1950 which has now taken the shape of an Act of Parliament Act LXXI [71] of 1950, and by Section 2 of the Ordinance and the Act it is provided:

(3.) OUR attention is then drawn to Article 141 which provides: "The law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all Courts within the territory of India." Sir Jamshedji almost suggests that the power of the judiciary is so great under the Constitution that the law once declared by the Supreme Court cannot be altered or amended by any competent Legislature. Surely that is not the meaning of Article 141. When the Supreme Court declared the law, it declared the law on the basis of the Indian Income -tax Act as it then was, and so long as the Indian Income -tax Act continued to remain in the some form, undoubtedly the law declared by the Supreme Court was the law of the land and no one can question that law. But when the Parliament amended the law, then it was the amended law that became the law of the land and not the law as declared by the Supreme Court.