RIONS INDIA Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS order shall dispose of three petitions, bearing C.W.P. No. 4621 of 2013, C W. P. No. 4634 of 2013 and C.W.P. No. 5748 of 2013 raising identical questions of law and facts. For facility of reference, the facts are being taken from C.W.P. No. 4621 of 2013. The petitioner is a dealer registered under the Delhi Value Added Tax Act and as also under the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956. The petitioner received an order from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, for supply of water purifiers. Such purchase orders dated February 12, 2013 and February 21, 2013 have been appended with the writ petition as annexure P1. The petitioner sent goods on free on rail (f.o.r.) basis and has charged full rate of Central sales tax at 12.5 percent. The goods were sent through truck No. HR55L -0596 and GR No. 50579 of Capital Transport Company, New Delhi. The truck reached Information Collection Centre (ICC), Shambu on February 27, 2013 for giving information as per the statutory requirement under section 51 of the Punjab Value Added Tax Act, 2005, but the goods were detained and notice was issued for March 2, 2013.

(2.) THE grievance of the petitioner is that the goods were detained though the goods under transport were during the inter -State sale on charging of Central sales tax but the payment was to be received after delivery of goods. Therefore, the authorities under the VAT Act had no jurisdiction to detain the goods and the vehicle except for the purpose of verification of the genuineness of the documents. The detention of the goods from February 27, 2013 till today has caused extensive loss to the petitioner not only on account of demurrage and detention of the truck but also for non -delivery of the goods to the university which was in time -bound manner.

(3.) MR . Jhingan has pointed out that Mr. S.S. Bangar, who was impleaded as respondent No. 4 has been taking similar actions earlier which were commented adversely even in the year 2000 in C.W.P. No. 4288 of 2000 (Rachna Steel Corporation, Mandi Gobindgarh v. State of Punjab), decided on April 27, 2000; C.W.P. No. 2432 of 2000 and C.W.P. No. 2437 of 2000 (Varinder Kumar & Co., Khanna v. State of Punjab), decided on September 21, 2000; C.W.P. No. 6859 of 2007 (Osaw Agro Industries Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Punjab : (2007) 9 VST 393 (P & H)), decided on August 6, 2007 as well as C.W.P. No. 14386 of 2011 (Azad Pipes Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Punjab and others), decided on August 12, 2011. In all these cases, it was Mr. Ban -gar -respondent No. 4, who was instrumental in detention of goods in similar circumstances and in each case, costs were imposed upon this officer personally and now he has again detained the goods in the present three cases. On the basis of the said argument, we called upon Mr. Bangar, respondent No. 4 to file his affidavit. Mr. Bangar has filed a short affidavit pointing out that the goods were detained by Mr. J. S. Waraich and that he has not passed any order and he had no role to play on the stage of detaining of goods.