SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA Vs. MAJOR JEHUGHES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This suit was instituted by the plaintiff to recover payment of the amount of taxes levied by the Cantonment authorities at Poona, -which the plaintiffs paid under protest on the ground that the assessment was illegal. The learned District Judge, by whom the case was heard, disposed of it in favour of the plaintiffs, and this appeal has been preferred by Government on two grounds, first, that the Court had no jurisdiction to entertain the suit and, secondly, that in respect of a portion of the money claimed the suit is barred by the provisions of Article 62 of the Limitation Act.

(2.) The argument on the question of jurisdiction amounted to this. According to the assessment rules certain authorities have been constituted for the assessment of taxes, and their assessment is final, except in so far as any question may arise as to the legality of their action having regard to the jurisdiction conferred upon them by the assessment rules, and it was contended that the assessment of the tax complained of by the plaintiffs was a pure question of fact and not off law, and that, therefore, no question arose for the decision of a Court of law, on the analogy, I presume, of applications in revision to the High Court under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The contention that the assessment of the tax raises a pure question Secretary of fact was based upon a passage from the judgment of Lord Halsbury in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board v. Birkenhead Assessment Committee,[1901] A.C. 175but if that judgment is read as a whole it does not as we shall have occasion to show later on, support the appellant s contention.

(3.) The rules affecting the taxation for Cantonment purposes of occupiers in Poona were framed by the Government of Bombay under the powers conferred by Section 22 of the Cantonments Act of 1880, powers which have been continued substantially in the same words through various Cantonment Acts up to the present time. Under those enactments it is provided that the local Government may, by notification in the official Gazette, impose in any cantonment, which is not included in the Municipality, any tax which, under any enactment in force at the date of the notification, can be imposed in any Municipality within the territories administered by such Government and that when any tax is leviable in a cantonment in pursuance of such notification the local Government may by notification apply or adapt to the cantonment the provisions of any enactment or rules in force at the date of the notification in any Municipality within the territories aforesaid relating to the assessment, collection or recovery of any tax, and refund or revision of, or exemption from any such tax.