KRANTI KUMAR SAXENA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Fifth Additional Judge, to the court of the District Judge, Indore, has referred the following questions for answer by this court under Section 113 read with Order XLVI, Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure:

(2.) AFTER receiving this reference, notices were issued to all the concerned parties. Nobody appeared on behalf of the claimants even after issuance of S. P. C. and repeated registered notices by this court. Shri V.P. Khare, learned Deputy Government Advocate appeared for the State.

(3.) SHRI R.L. Jain submitted that under Section 194A of the Income-tax Act, 1961, tax is to be deducted by the person responsible for paying any income by way of interest and has also placed reliance on a decision in the case of Bal-deep Singh v. Union of India [1993] 199 ITR 628, in which it has been held by the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the executing court is not the person responsible for paying the interest. Therefore, the executing court is not liable to deduct tax at source on such interest. It is the person responsible for paying "any income by way of interest" is responsible. His further submission is that Section 194A of the Income-tax Act, 1961, in its strict sense is not applicable to reference cases under sections 18 and 30 of the Land Acquisition Act and, therefore, the court is not liable to deposit the deducted amount by TDS challan. Since the amount of tax is not to be deducted, there is no need to issue deduction certificate in Form No. 25A of the Income-tax Act and there is also no need to file the return like a private individual. The court is acting only as a conduit for getting the payment made to the petitioner in the execution of a decree. The real person responsible for paying income-tax by way of interest is the Land Acquisition Officer who had the money in his possession.