KASTURCHAND Vs. SECRETARY, MUNICIPAL COMMITTEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) UNDER Section 83(2) Municipalities Act, the Deputy Commissioner of Betul has referred to this Court a question concerning the principles of the assesment of haisiyat tax on Seth Kasturchand under Section 66 of the Act. The same question is submitted in respect of the assessment on Seth Misrilal (Civil Reference No. 265 of 1927). Bach of them lives in, the Betul Municipality and owns villages; outside the Municipality, but in the Betul District, from which he derives an income.

(2.) THE question on which the Deputy Commissioner says he has reasonable doubt is, nowhere formulated, but it is in respect of the words of Clause (n) of Section 66(1), which, says that a haisiyat tax can be imposed on, residents within the limits-of a Municipality

(3.) BUT the cases themselves and the references in them have arisen out of such deplorably careless and distorted thinking that it can hardly be called thought at all. It has been assumed by everybody, even in the argument of the matter in this Court, that in one particular case, which is not very clearly defined, the word "circumstances" does not mean circumstances at all, but the source of the income which creates those circumstances and is the proper measure of them. The case so excepted seems to be the case of income derived from agriculture in the same district as that in which the Municipality is situated (or perhaps the same province). It is not considered apparently that money received by the assessee in Betul is not a part of his "circumstances" if it is derived from agriculture in the Punjab or in England or from shares in a Mill in Manchester or even in another town of the Betul District.