VORA WIRES Vs. COMMISSIONER OF SALES TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Board of Revenue, M. P. , Gwalior (hereinafter, for short, "the Tribunal"), on an application made under section 44 (1) of the M. P. General Sales Tax Act, 1958 (for short, "the State Act") read with section 9 (2) of the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 (for short, "the Central Act") by the applicant-assessee has stated the case and referred the undernoted questions of law for the opinion of this Court arising out of its order dated February 20, 1987 passed in Appeal No. 332-PBR of 1985 :

(2.) BRIEFLY stated the facts of the case as unfolded are these : The applicant-assessee is engaged in the business of purchase of wire rods and sales of different types of wires such as annealed wire, electrode wire, galvanised wire drawn from wire rods. He is a registered dealer under the State Act and the Central Act. He was assessed to tax by the Assistant Commissioner of Sales Tax, Indore, by assessment order dated November 26, 1983 for the period July 1, 1979 to June 30, 1980. The assessing authority besides disallowing certain claims of deductions made by the applicant-assessee, also imposed a penalty Rs. 30,000 under section 17 (3) (b) (ii) and section 17 (3) (c) (iii) of the State Act read with section 9 (2) of the Central Act on the applicant for allegedly not filing returns for the first two quarters and late filing of the third and fourth quarterly returns as also the late payment of tax according to such returns. The assessee's first appeal was dismissed by the first appellate authority and, therefore, he came up before the Tribunal in second appeal. The Tribunal accepted assessee's contention in respect of part of his claims for deductions and remanded the case to the assessing authority for reassessment on that count. The assessee's appeal regarding imposition of penalty was, however, dismissed by the Tribunal (order of the Tribunal is at annexure "b" forming part of the statement of the case ).

(3.) WE have heard Shri G. M. Chafekar, learned Senior Counsel appearing with Smt. Meena Chafekar for the applicant-assessee and Shri Surjeet Singh, learned Government Advocate for the non-applicant-State. The main contention of Shri Chafekar is that the Tribunal could not have taken recourse to both the clauses (b) and (c) of sub-section (3) of section 17 of the State Act as according to him they are independent of each other, the former applies in case of of late filing of return while latter relates to non-filing of the return. He further submitted that the assessee had in fact filed all the quarterly returns and as such clause (c) was wholly inapplicable to the case.