Contemporaneous proof of admitted tax payment is a condition precedent to appeal entertainment; later challans do not cure the defect.

An appeal memorandum must be accompanied by satisfactory proof of payment of the tax admitted to be due, because the proviso treats contemporaneous proof of payment as a condition precedent to entertainment of the appeal. Filing payment challans later does not satisfy that statutory requirement, and the appeal rules cannot override the mandate by creating a relation-back fiction. The power to return an appeal for correction cannot be used to cure non-compliance with the requirement that proof of payment be filed with the memorandum within limitation. The admitted-tax defect therefore remains uncured and the appeal is not entertainable.

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Issues: Whether the omission to deposit the admitted amount of tax along with the memorandum of appeal was cured by the relevant appeal rule.

Analysis: The proviso to the appeal provision required the memorandum of appeal to be accompanied by satisfactory proof of payment of the tax admitted to be due. The requirement was treated as a condition precedent to entertainment of the appeal, meaning that the proof of payment had to be presented together with the memorandum of appeal and within the limitation period. Subsequent production of payment challans did not satisfy the statutory requirement. The appeal rules did not override this mandate, and the power to return an appeal for correction could not be used to create a legal fiction that later compliance related back to the original filing.

Conclusion: The defect was not cured by the appeal rules, and the appeal was not entertainable for want of contemporaneous proof of payment of the admitted tax.

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