Revisional power cannot levy penalty where the assessing authority never proposed or imposed it.

Revisional jurisdiction under section 32 of the Madras General Sales Tax Act does not permit the Deputy Commissioner to invoke section 12(3) for the first time and levy penalty where the assessing authority neither proposed nor imposed it at the assessment stage. Because section 12(3) vests the penalty power in the assessing authority during assessment under section 12(2), and no express or implied penalty order existed for revision, the revisional authority could not assume that original power. The penalty imposed in revision was therefore without jurisdiction and invalid.

---

---

Issues: Whether the Deputy Commissioner, while exercising revisional jurisdiction under section 32 of the Madras General Sales Tax Act, 1959, could invoke section 12(3) for the first time and levy penalty when the assessing authority had neither proposed nor imposed such penalty under section 12(3).

Analysis: Section 12(3) empowers the assessing authority to levy penalty in the course of an assessment under section 12(2). On the facts, the assessing authority had not indicated any proposal to levy penalty at the pre-assessment stage and had not exercised the power when completing the assessment. In such a situation, there was no order, express or implied, on the question of penalty for the revisional authority to interfere with. Revisional power under section 32 is confined to revising the order made by the assessing authority and does not permit the Deputy Commissioner to exercise in the first instance the original power conferred on the assessing authority under section 12(3).

Conclusion: The Deputy Commissioner had no jurisdiction to levy penalty for the first time in revision; the penalty order was invalid.

Ratio Decidendi: A revisional authority cannot, in the absence of any assessment-stage proposal or finding on penalty, exercise for the first time a power that the statute confers specifically on the assessing authority.

---