HARDWARI MAL HARNATH DAS FIRM Vs. MUNICIPAL BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is plaintiffs appeal and arises out of a suit brought by him for a declaration that the defendant, the Municipal Board of Dahra Dun, had no authority to levy "terminal tax or octroi" on such Roods of the plaintiff as were received by him at the railway station of Dehra Dun and were then taken by him to his shop at Rajpur which is beyond the municipal limits of Dehra Dun, and were neither "kept nor sold" within the municipal limits of Dehra Dun for a perpetual injunction restraining the defendant from levying such a tax on the goods mentioned above; and the recovery of a sum of Rs. 86-0-6 which the Municipal Board had realized from the plaintiff between 28 March and 9 August 1933, as terminal tax on such goods. Both the Courts below have agreed in dismissing the suit.

(2.) Section 128(1), Clause (xiii), U.P. Municipalities Act, (2 of 1916) provides that, subject to any general rules or special orders of the local Government in this behalf a municipality may impose "a tax on goods imported into...any municipality...." Under the powers conferred on them by Section 296 of the Act, the Local Government have framed "Rules for the assessment and collection of terminal tax in the Dehra Dun Municipality". The word import is defined in Rule 1 (a) thus : Import shall mean the bringing of goods into the terminal tax limits from outside those limits"; and in Sub-rule (b) importer is defined as meaning the person in whose name the railway document is made out and shall include the parson in possession of the goods on which the tax is leviable.

(3.) Sub-rule (c) provides that terminal tax shall mean the tax imposed under Section 128(1)(xiii), United Provinces Municipalities Act, 1916, (United Provinces Act, 2 of 1916)....