Retrospective validation and revisional power: disclosed turnover wrongly exempted remains revisable, not escaped assessment under tax law.

A retrospective validating enactment can render an earlier assessment inconsistent with the law as amended, so an order that was valid when made may become revisable as improper or illegal. Where the disputed turnover was disclosed and considered in the original assessment but was wrongly exempted under the earlier law, the matter is not escaped turnover; it falls within revisional jurisdiction rather than the separate escaped-assessment machinery.

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Issues: (i) Whether an assessment order, valid when made, could be revised as improper or illegal after a retrospective validating enactment altered the governing law; and (ii) whether the matter was one of escaped turnover so as to fall outside revision and within the separate machinery for escaped assessment.

Issue (i): Whether an assessment order, valid when made, could be revised as improper or illegal after a retrospective validating enactment altered the governing law.

Analysis: The assessment originally made by the Commercial Tax Officer had treated the disputed turnover as not assessable under the law as it then stood. The subsequent validating enactment operated retrospectively and lifted the constitutional bar on taxing the relevant inter-State sales, with the result that the law had to be treated as having been in force on the date of the original assessment. An order that became inconsistent with the law as retrospectively enacted was therefore open to revision as an improper or illegal order within the revisional power.

Conclusion: The order of the Commercial Tax Officer was rightly held revisable and the contrary view of the Tribunal was incorrect.

Issue (ii): Whether the matter was one of escaped turnover so as to fall outside revision and within the separate machinery for escaped assessment.

Analysis: The disputed turnover had been disclosed and was actually considered in the original assessment; the assessing authority had merely exempted it on a view of law that later became untenable because of retrospective validation. That situation is not escaped turnover but a case of under-assessment or improper exemption. The revisional jurisdiction, not the escaped-assessment machinery, was therefore the appropriate source of power.

Conclusion: The dispute was not a case of escaped turnover, and the Tribunal erred in treating it as such.

Final Conclusion: The revisional order was sustained, the Tribunal's order was set aside, and the tax levy on the disputed turnover stood restored.

Ratio Decidendi: When a statute is retrospectively amended or validated, the original assessment must be judged by the law as so amended, and a disclosed turnover wrongly exempted on the earlier law is revisable as an improper or illegal assessment rather than as escaped turnover.

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