BLUE DART EXPRESS LIMITED Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition has been filed under section 42(2) of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act") for issuance of a mandamus directing the Sales Tax Tribunal, Haryana (hereinafter referred to as "the Tribunal"), to refer the following questions of law, said to be arising from the order of the Tribunal dated October 20, 1993 in S.T.A. No. 89 of 1992-93, to this Court for its opinion :

(2.) The petitioner-company is engaged in the business of transportation of goods from one part of the country to another. It is a courier company with head office at Bombay and branches at various places in the country. On May 5, 1991 officer-in-charge, Sales Tax Check Barrier, Kundli, intercepted a tempo loaded with certain goods. The driver Narinder Pal produced G.R. 318 dated May 4, 1991 of M/s. Ambala Road Transport Corporation (Registered) and a letter pad of M/s. Blue Dart Express (petitioner) pertaining to the goods loaded in his tempo number PIS-3391. In this letter, the goods were shown as cloth and their total value was shown at Rs. 3,50,000. The officer in-charge, during the course of verification and investigation, found that the goods being carried were not cloth but were readymade garments. The dealer did not produce any bill of sale with regard to these goods and no ST-39 form of Sales Tax Check Barrier, G.T. Road, Ambala, was produced to prove that these goods were coming from Ludhiana. It was held by the officer in-charge of the check barrier that these goods were coming from Ambala after manufacture of these goods as readymade garments. The officer in-charge took this to be a case of an attempt to evade the tax. A penalty of Rs. 87,500 was imposed under section 37(6) of the Act. The appeal filed by the petitioner before the Joint Excise and Taxation Commissioner (Appeals) was dismissed. Further appeal filed before the Tribunal also met with the same fate. Tribunal dismissed the appeal by recording the following findings : "I have considered the submissions of the parties and have also seen the facts on record. It is an admitted fact that the appellant had shown the goods as coming from Ludhiana to Delhi and were described as hosiery cloth of the value of Rs. 3,50,000. It is also a fact that no ST-39 was produced at the barrier. As per the details of the letter pad, the value of the goods was shown as Rs. 3,50,000 whereas as per the invoice produced at a later stage, it was shown at Rs. 2,75,000 and as per the certificate issued by Punjab barrier, it was shown as Rs. 2,97,981. Even the weight varied as it was shown at 800 kgs. as per the letter pad whereas in the GR it was shown as 900 kgs. These facts clearly lead to the conclusion that the goods, i.e., readymade garments loaded in the vehicle were being taken away from Ambala, and not from Ludhiana as claimed from where only hosiery cloth was loaded. Had the transaction not been detected the appellant would have evaded tax on it. In such a case the maximum penalty prescribed is 25 per cent and is thus within the limits prescribed. I, therefore, find that there is no ground to interfere with the orders of the lower authorities and consequently the appeal has no force and is hereby dismissed.

(3.) Petition under section 42(1) of the Act was filed by the petitioner before the Tribunal for referring the three questions of law, reproduced in the earlier part of the judgment, to this Court for its opinion, said to be arising from the order of the Tribunal.