Substantial compliance for declaration forms: technical defects alone do not defeat deduction unless genuineness or misuse is shown.

Deduction claims based on prescribed declaration forms under the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act required substantial, not strict, compliance. Defects such as omissions in dates, signatures, registration details, or inapplicable entries were not fatal where the purchasing dealer remained identifiable and the form was otherwise genuine. Rejection was justified only when reliable evidence, including local inspection reports or surrounding circumstances, showed that the dealer had closed business, the form was misused, or the declaration pre-dated the transactions it was meant to cover. Purely technical objections and conjectural suspicion were insufficient to defeat the deduction.

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Issues: (i) Whether defects in declaration forms furnished under section 5(2)(a)(ii) of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941 were so vital as to justify disallowance of deductions; (ii) Whether evidence such as local inspection reports and surrounding circumstances was sufficient to reject declaration forms as not genuine; (iii) Whether defects relating to dates, signatures, and misuse of particular declaration forms justified rejection in individual cases.

Issue (i): Whether defects in declaration forms furnished under section 5(2)(a)(ii) of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941 were so vital as to justify disallowance of deductions.

Analysis: The proviso to section 5(2)(a)(ii), read with rule 27A of the Bengal Sales Tax Rules, 1941, required declarations in the prescribed form, but the court held that the selling dealer depends on the purchasing dealer to fill up the form and cannot control every omission. The statutory requirement was therefore treated as directory, not strictly mandatory, and only substantial compliance was necessary. Omissions or errors that did not make the purchasing dealer unidentifiable were not treated as fatal.

Conclusion: The defects in the declaration forms in the first group of questions were not vital and did not justify rejection of the deductions.

Issue (ii): Whether evidence such as local inspection reports and surrounding circumstances was sufficient to reject declaration forms as not genuine.

Analysis: Where inspection reports showed that the purchasing dealer had already closed business or had suspended business before the alleged transactions, the court treated those reports as admissible material supporting disbelief of the genuineness of the sales. In such cases, the Revenue was not acting without evidence. Conversely, where the record did not show closure at the relevant time or where suspicion rested only on irrelevant comparisons of signatures or conjecture, rejection was not justified.

Conclusion: The declaration forms in the second group were validly rejected in the cases where the inspection evidence established closure or misuse, but not where the alleged defects were unsupported by reliable evidence.

Issue (iii): Whether defects relating to dates, signatures, and misuse of particular declaration forms justified rejection in individual cases.

Analysis: Omission of the date of the registration certificate, omission to date the declarant's signature, non-striking out of inapplicable alternatives, and failure to cast the totals were held not to be vital defects. However, a declaration dated earlier than the transactions it purported to cover, or a declaration shown by the counterfoil to have been used for another dealer, furnished legitimate grounds for rejection. On the signature issue, mere difference in handwriting or an undated signature did not by itself invalidate the form unless forgery or misuse was established.

Conclusion: The court upheld rejection only where the defects or surrounding circumstances showed lack of genuineness or misuse, and rejected the contention that the remaining formal defects were fatal.

Final Conclusion: The reference was answered by upholding the substantial-compliance approach for declaration forms, rejecting purely technical objections, and sustaining rejection only where evidence showed that the declarations were not genuine or had been misused.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute grants a deduction dependent on a prescribed declaration, the prescribed form must be substantially complied with, but defects that do not prevent identification of the purchasing dealer or are not supported by reliable evidence of misuse do not by themselves defeat the deduction.

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