BANWARILAL SITARAM Vs. STATE OF ORISSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) UNDER section 24 (1) of the Orissa Sales Tax Act (briefly referred to as the "act"), the Member, Additional Sales Tax Tribunal, Orissa, has referred the following question for determination of this court :

(2.) THE manner in which the question posed to this court for answer arose may now be recounted. The assessee is a dealer carrying on business at Rourkela and was assessed to sales tax under section 12 (4) of the Act for the assessment years 1962-63 and 1963-64 by the Sales Tax Officer, Rourkela Circle at Uditnagar. During the assessment proceedings from some seized books of account of Messrs. Sitaram Jaiswal, some transactions were found to have been carried on between the assessee and that firm. On cross verification, the following four transactions were fond in the assessee's accounts :

(3.) A lot of reliance has been placed on the statement of Sitaram Jaiswal by all the authorities. The ambiguity that existed regarding identity of the dealer with whom Sitaram Jaiswal had carried on the impugned transactions was said to have been removed beyond doubt on account of the unambiguous and clear evidence of Sitaram Jaiswal identifying the dealer with whom the transactions had taken place. If that oral evidence was not available, quite possibly, merely on the entries in the account books, the Sales Tax Officer may not have rejected the accounts of the assessee by finding suppression. It is the evidence of correlation that has mattered. Thus, the statement of Sitaram Jaiswal is a very important piece of evidence, that is, this statement though the Sales Tax Officer was going to utilise against the assessee was not disclosed to the assessee and he did not have the opportunity of meeting the adverse material contained in such evidence. When the assessee made a grievance of this situation before the first appellate authority and having appealed before the second appellate authority, they turned down the assessee's request by saying that the claim for confrontation had not been made at the appropriate time.