Fiscal exemption amendment, not corrigendum, operates prospectively and preserves accrued benefits until Gazette publication.

A writ challenge to the legality of a tax exemption notification was maintainable despite available assessment and appellate remedies because the attack was on the source of the levy, not merely an assessment order. The purported corrigendum was treated as a substantive amendment, not a clerical correction, because it changed the exemption chart and reduced the benefit from full exemption to 25 per cent. In the absence of clear retrospective language, the amendment operated only prospectively, and publication in the Gazette marked the point at which the revised position became effective. Accrued exemption under the original scheme was therefore preserved until publication.

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Issues: (i) Whether the writ petition was not maintainable because statutory assessment and appellate remedies were available and proceedings were pending before the assessing authority. (ii) Whether the corrigendum to the sales tax exemption scheme was merely a correction or an amendment, and whether it could operate so as to reduce benefits already accrued under the original scheme.

Issue (i): Whether the writ petition was not maintainable because statutory assessment and appellate remedies were available and proceedings were pending before the assessing authority.

Analysis: The challenge was directed against the validity of the notification itself and sought quashing of the corrigendum. Such relief could not be granted by the assessing authority or the appellate authority. Where the legality of the notification forming the basis of the levy is questioned, the existence of statutory remedies does not bar writ jurisdiction as a matter of rule, especially when the challenge is to the source of the taxing consequence rather than merely to an assessment order.

Conclusion: The writ petition was maintainable and the objection based on alternative remedy was rejected.

Issue (ii): Whether the corrigendum to the sales tax exemption scheme was merely a correction or an amendment, and whether it could operate so as to reduce benefits already accrued under the original scheme.

Analysis: The corrigendum did not correct any clerical or typographical mistake. It altered the placement of sick units in the exemption chart and thereby reduced the quantum of exemption from full benefit to 25 per cent. A measure of that nature amounted to an amendment of the scheme. An amendment altering fiscal benefits does not take away accrued rights retrospectively unless the instrument clearly so provides. The scheme had to be construed strictly, and in the absence of express retrospective language, the altered position could operate only prospectively. Since publication in the official Gazette is what gives operative force to such a notification, the amended position could not govern the period before publication.

Conclusion: The corrigendum was held to be prospective in operation only, and the petitioner remained entitled to the original benefit up to the date of publication in the Gazette.

Final Conclusion: The petition succeeded only in part: the Court protected the petitioner's accrued exemption up to the date when the corrigendum became public law, while sustaining the State's power to modify the scheme prospectively thereafter.

Ratio Decidendi: A fiscal exemption notification that substantively changes the extent of an existing benefit is an amendment, not a mere corrigendum, and in the absence of clear retrospective language it operates only prospectively, preserving rights accrued under the original scheme until the amended notification becomes effective by publication.

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