Income Tax Appellate Tribunal

Plea raised by petitioners was that official of Inland Revenue was bound by decision of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal rendered in an earlier case and statutory remedies were illusory

Validity

Decision of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal was only binding upon parties in appeal decided by the Tribunal and was not a binding precedent for subsequent cases for the purpose of any question of law that it decided while deciding such appeal

Statutory remedies were not illusory as under Sales Tax Act, 1990, a remedy against decisions by statutory adjudicatory forms was before Division Bench of High Court in its reference jurisdiction

High Court was loathed to exercise its discretionary Constitutional jurisdiction to decide a question of law involving interpretation of language used in SRO having effect of usurping reference jurisdiction of High Court

High Court declined to interfere in the matter as show-cause notices were not palpably without jurisdiction nor suffered from mala fide

Constitutional petition was dismissed in circumstances.

Referee Member has to remain within the paramaeters proposed and questions or issues referred by the other Members for the reason of their respective difference of opinion with each other.

Income-tax Appellate Tribunal had no authority to interpret the power of Legislature or the provisions of the Constitution.

Since a decision of a Division Bench was binding on the other Division Bench of the same strength, there was no escape for a Single Member from not following the judgment of a Division Bench even if it had not addressed some issues which, in the opinion of Single Member, had a bearing on the decision given by the Division Bench

What was left with the Member was to record his concerns and let the matter to be decided by higher authorities but he was not saddled with the power to dissent from a Division Bench decision.

Decision of Division Bench was binding on another Division Bench and that a Single Bench ad no authority not to follow a decision of a Division Bench.

One member, in the absence of his contradictory note on the facts of the case, ought not to have deviated from the judgments of the Appellate Tribunal and forming questions on the basis of his own findings whereby he had tried to create legal infirmities in the earlier decisions of the Appellate Tribunal.

One member had no authority to differ from the conclusion drawn by the other which was based on the earlier decisions of the Appellate Tribunal having similar set of facts moreso when one member had not found any deviation in the facts and without recording in his order that the facts of the two cases were not similar

Merely for the reason that in his opinion, the Appellate Tribunal in its earlier orders had not touched upon certain issues which, according to him were important, did not authorize him to deviate from the earlier orders and to record his own findings different from the findings recorded in the earlier decisions.

Counsel for parties had stated that High Court vide judgment passed in appeals to examine the identifiable issue having remanded a number of cases to concerned Collector of Sales Tax, setting aside impugned judgment, same order be passed in the petition for leave to appeal

In view of earlier decision of High Court, petition for leave to appeal was converted into appeal and allowed

Impugned order was set aside and case was remanded to the Collector of Sales Tax for disposed.