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Issues: (i) Whether notices issued in the form prescribed under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, were invalid for initiating revision of assessments originally made under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1946. (ii) Whether the notices for revision were barred by limitation or by unreasonable delay in the exercise of revisional power.
Issue (i): Whether notices issued in the form prescribed under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, were invalid for initiating revision of assessments originally made under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1946.
Analysis: The notices were examined by their true character and not by the mere heading or the form used. The authority to revise or reopen the assessments survived the repeal of the 1946 Act by reason of the saving provision in section 48 of the 1953 Act, which preserved liabilities already incurred and provided for their assessment and recovery under the 1953 Act. The body of the notices did not state that they were issued under the 1953 Act in substitution of the 1946 Act, and the Collector had authority to proceed with reassessment or revision under the surviving statutory scheme.
Conclusion: The notices were not invalid on the ground that they were issued in the form prescribed under the 1953 Act; the objection was rejected.
Issue (ii): Whether the notices for revision were barred by limitation or by unreasonable delay in the exercise of revisional power.
Analysis: The Court applied the earlier principle that statutory powers of reassessment or revision must ordinarily be exercised within a reasonable period, and that the yardstick of reasonableness may be the limitation period prescribed for reassessment. However, the amendment made by Act XXII of 1959 to section 15 of the 1953 Act expressly provided that the limitation provision would not apply to proceedings or notices under sections 14 and 31, and gave the amendment retrospective operation. That legislative change displaced the earlier implication of a time limit for revisional action under section 31.
Conclusion: The notices were not vitiated by limitation or unreasonable delay after the amendment; the objection was rejected.
Final Conclusion: The petitioners failed to establish any ground for interference under Article 226, and the challenge to the impugned notices did not succeed.
Ratio Decidendi: A statutory notice must be tested by its substance rather than its form, and where the legislature retrospectively removes the implication of a time limit for reassessment or revision, the revisional authority may proceed notwithstanding the earlier judicial rule requiring action within a reasonable period.
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