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Issues: (i) Whether, under section 71 of the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1959 and rule 66-A of the Bombay Sales Tax Rules, 1959, the prescribed authorisation to attend before a sales tax authority must necessarily include all terms of engagement and authority to act, or whether it may be confined to authority to attend and appear and plead. (ii) Whether such authorisation, when filed before a sales tax authority, is chargeable only with court-fee under item 12 of Schedule II of the Bombay Court-fees Act or with stamp duty under the Bombay Stamp Act.
Issue (i): Whether, under section 71 of the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1959 and rule 66-A of the Bombay Sales Tax Rules, 1959, the prescribed authorisation to attend before a sales tax authority must necessarily include all terms of engagement and authority to act, or whether it may be confined to authority to attend and appear and plead.
Analysis: Section 71 permits attendance before the sales tax authority through specified representatives and requires authorisation in the prescribed form. The form prescribed under rule 66-A indicates that authority to attend is the basic requirement, while authority to act is an additional and optional term. The statutory language does not justify insisting that every authorisation must contain all contractual incidents of engagement, and the prescribed form cannot be treated as excluding other agreed terms. For an Advocate, the right to practise includes appearance, pleading, and acting when authorised. For other authorised representatives, authority to attend is sufficient to enable appearance and pleading, while authority to act arises only if separately conferred.
Conclusion: The authorisation need not invariably include authority to act, and authority to attend includes the right to appear and plead before the sales tax authority.
Issue (ii): Whether such authorisation, when filed before a sales tax authority, is chargeable only with court-fee under item 12 of Schedule II of the Bombay Court-fees Act or with stamp duty under the Bombay Stamp Act.
Analysis: The sales tax authorities function as executive officers of the State, not as courts. An instrument authorising appearance before such an executive authority falls within the class of documents chargeable under the Court-fees Act when it is in the nature of a vakalatnama or mukhtyarnama for conduct of the case. It is not governed by the stamp-duty requirement applicable to powers of attorney under the Bombay Stamp Act. The proper levy is therefore the court-fee prescribed for such authorisations.
Conclusion: The authorisation is chargeable with court-fee stamp of Rs. 2 under item 12 of Schedule II of the Bombay Court-fees Act and not with stamp duty under the Bombay Stamp Act.
Final Conclusion: The petitions succeeded, the impugned insistence on the prescribed stamping requirement was set aside, and the petitioners obtained the claimed reliefs with costs.
Ratio Decidendi: An authorisation to attend before a sales tax authority under section 71 of the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1959 includes the right to appear and plead, while authority to act is optional and contractual; where the authority is an executive officer and the document is a vakalatnama or mukhtyarnama for proceedings before that authority, the document is chargeable with the court-fee prescribed by the Court-fees Act and not with stamp duty under the Stamp Act.
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