KISAN SUPDU INGALE Vs. BHUSAWAL BOROUGH MUNICIPALITY BHUSAWAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner is employed in the carriage and Wagon Depot of the Central Railway at Bhusawal. This Railway Depot is situated within the limits of the Bhusawa Borough Municipality. This municipality is governed by the Bombay Municipal Boroughs act 1925, Section 73 of this Act specifies the Taxes, which a municipality may impose sub - section (1) of this section state that subjects to any general or special order, which he state Government may make in this behalf an to the Municipality may impose for the purposes of this Act any of the following taxes, namely. X X X X X (XIV) any other tax which under the constitution the state legislature has power to impose in the state. Section 75 lays down the procedure which the Municipality has to follow before imposing a tax. One of the taxes which the state legislature has power to impose is a tax on profession, trades calling and employments under entry No. 60 List II in the seventh Schedule to the constitution. In 1959 the Bhusawal Municipality decided to impose this tax. It framed rule and by - laws for levying this tax. These rules and by - laws were sanctioned by the state Government on 22nd June 1960 clause (c) in rule 3 of the Bhusawal Trades, profession, calling and Employments Taxes Rules, state the. "every person who hold any officer of profit under any Government or any doby or authority within the local area for not less than four months in any year shall pay the tax ever year on employment at the rate specified in scheduled A provided of any company or person to the Municipality by way of the tax shall not exceed Rs. 250/- per annum. " the rates of tax are specified in schedule A to the Rules. Except in the case of owners of cotton ginning and pressing factories, in whose case the maximum tax payable is Rs. 100/- the maximum tax which any other person is liable to pay under these rules is Rs. 10/- per year. On 17th October 1962 the petitioner was called upon by the chief officer of the municipality to pay Rs. 6 being the amount of the tax for the year 1962-63 due from him. The petitioner did not pay this tax. A union of the railway employee made representations against the tax to this Municipality but it did not succeed. The petitioner then filed the present special civil application. In which the he has challenged the validity of the tax as well has of notice issued to him by the chief office calling upon him to pay the tax.

(2.) MR. Ramamurthy on behalf of the petitioner has first urged that the Municipality was not competent to levy a tax on any employment in the nature of service in which a person is employed to work for another. He has contended that the word "employments" should be construed ejusdem generis with the offer works mentioned in entry 60 in List II in schedule VII of the constitution, professions trades and callings and that is means "such employments which are akin to in the nature of profession trades and callings" we have carefully considered this argument. But we do not think that there is much merit in it. If entry to was intended to include every occupation other than service it is difficult to see why the word "employments" was used at all. The words are used in any entry in the constitution. Every word must therefore be deemed to have been used with some object and the word can be held to redundant. The words "profession trade and calling" are also general words which according to the dictionary have wide can be held to be wide meaning. "profession" as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary means "a business or profession which that one publicly words the occupation which one professess to be skilled by and to follow a vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of learning or science is used in its application to the affairs of others, or in the practice of art founded upon it in a wider sense and calling or occupation by which "the practice of some occupation business or profession habitually carried on especially when practiced as means of livelihood or gain a calling now usually applied to mercantile occupation and to a skilled handicraft, as distinct from a profession and especially restricted to a skilled handicraft was distinguished from a professional or mercantile occupation on the one hand and from unskilled occupation on the one hand and from unskilled in the labours in the other "calling" is defined in the dictionary as meaning "position estate, or station in life rank; ordinary occupation means by which livelihood is earned business trade" Any occupation by which livelihood is earned would therefore fall within the word "profession trades and callings" Consequently even if we were to accept the argument that the words "employment " must be restricted to the same genus as these works and the at is draws it meaning from them, it will be difficult to hold that section in which a person is employed to work the another would not be employment with in the meaning of entry 60 in List II in schedule VII to the constitution.

(3.) IN this connection I may refer to the decision of Punjab High court in Waliati Ram v. Rupar Municipality AIR 1960 punjab 699. Section 61 of the punjab Municipal Act empowered the municipal committee to levy a tax on person practising any profession or art on carrying on any trade or calling in the Municipal committee to impose a tax an employments. The question which arose for consideration by the punjab High Court was whether he was consequently liable to the tax imposed under section 61 of the Act. It was argued that "employment" was not covered by the other three expression used in the section, profession larte or calling. This arugments was negaticed and it was held thatas the words were under used in entry in the constitutions they must be construed in their widest amplitude and consequently the person employed by the Bus syndicate must be held to have been carrying on profession or calling. At page 672 it was observed. : "it is very difficult to hold that the framers of the constitutions while using these words of were using them as terms of art. The object of the entry is to enable the state Legislature to tax person, who are carrying on any profession, trades callings and employments. . . These four words do not seem to be used a mutually exclusive sense. These words over lap one another and appears to have been to used by way of abundant caution is order to make these provisions broadbased and comprehensive. . . . The object of putting them all together is to ensure that no particular category of persons is being eliminated"