Validating tax legislation must remove the basis of invalidity; mere retrospective declaration cannot cure assessments on dissolved firms.

Section 24 of the Mysore Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, 1970 was intended to validate earlier assessments made on dissolved firms, but it did not retrospectively confer the legal authority that was missing under the Mysore Sales Tax Act, 1957. The provision could not cure the defect merely by declaring such assessments not invalid and by overriding prior judicial findings; a validating law must remove the basis of invalidity and create a lawful foundation for the assessment. On that reasoning, the reassessment orders made under the amendment were without jurisdiction and were quashed.

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Issues: Whether section 24 of the Mysore Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, 1970 validly retrospectively cured and validated assessment orders made on a dissolved firm, and whether the reassessment orders made pursuant to that provision were without jurisdiction.

Analysis: The firm had dissolved on the death of a partner, and the earlier assessments had already been held inoperative because the Mysore Sales Tax Act, 1957, as it then stood, did not authorise assessment of a dissolved firm. Section 24 of the 1970 amending Act contained a non obstante clause and declared such prior assessments not to be invalid merely because they were made on dissolved firms, but it did not remove the underlying legal defect by conferring retrospective power to assess dissolved firms at the relevant time. A validating law can sustain prior assessments only when the Legislature removes the basis of invalidity and reenacts a valid legal foundation; it cannot merely nullify judicial decisions or command obedience to an earlier invalid assessment.

Conclusion: Section 24 of the Mysore Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, 1970 was ineffective so far as it purported to validate the invalid assessments made on dissolved firms prior to 1 April 1964, and the impugned reassessment orders were quashed.

Ratio Decidendi: A validating statute can cure an invalid tax assessment only if it retrospectively removes the legal basis of the invalidity and confers the necessary taxing authority; it cannot merely override a judicial declaration of invalidity.

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