HINDUSTAN AERONAUTICS LTD Vs. REGISTERING AUTHORITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In these writ applications common questions of law and fact are involved and, therefore, they were heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

(2.) THE petitioner, a Company registered under the Indian Companies Act, and wholly owned by Government of India, assails the levy of tax in respect of vehicles belonging to the petitioner under the provisions of the Orissa Motor Vehicles Taxation Act as contract carriage, inter alia, on the ground that the said vehicles could not have been held to be 'contract carriages' as these were meant for carrying the children of the employees of the Company as well as the employees of the Company and the forums below committed gross error of law and jurisdiction in treating the vehicles as contract carriages and levying the demands in question Not only the Taxing Authority levied the demands on a finding that the vehicles are contract carriages, but also the appellate authority as wail as the revisional authority affirmed the same and hence these writ applications.

(3.) THE stand of the learned Standing Counsel appearing for the Department, on the other hand. is that the forums below having examined the materials produced before them and having reached a conclusion that the vehicles were being used for carrying passengers for hire Or reward and, therefore, were being used as contract carriages, the said conclusion is immune from interference by the High Court in a writ of certiorari. According to the learned counsel neither there is any error of jurisdiction, nor is there any patent error of law with the orders of the forums below which could be corrected by issuance of a writ of certiorari.