Appeal-admission conditions must be strictly construed; interest deposit could not be added to the statutory precondition for hearing.

Section 20(5) of the Punjab General Sales Tax Act required deposit of tax or penalty, as the case may be, before an appeal could be entertained; it did not expressly require payment of interest. The statutory deeming fiction treating interest as tax for recovery purposes could not be extended to the separate appellate-admission provision, and such a restrictive precondition had to be construed strictly. Accordingly, insistence on deposit of interest as a condition precedent for hearing the appeal was held illegal, and the assessee was entitled to have the appeal heard on merits after complying with the balance tax requirement.

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Issues: Whether, under Section 20(5) of the Punjab General Sales Tax Act, 1948, the deposit of interest in addition to tax was a condition precedent for entertaining an appeal.

Analysis: The statutory scheme distinguished between tax, penalty and interest. Although Section 11D treated interest, for limited purposes of collection and recovery, as tax, Section 20(5) required proof only of payment of tax or penalty, as the case may be, and its proviso empowered relaxation where the assessee was unable to pay the tax assessed or penalty imposed. The omission of any reference to interest in Section 20(5) was held to be deliberate. The deeming fiction in the recovery provision could not be enlarged to read interest into the appeal-admission provision. Since a restrictive precondition to the exercise of appellate remedy must be construed strictly, the appellate authority could not insist on payment of interest as a condition for hearing the appeal.

Conclusion: Payment of interest was not required as a condition precedent for entertaining the appeal under Section 20(5), and the insistence on such deposit was illegal.

Final Conclusion: The writ petition succeeded, the order insisting upon deposit of interest was set aside, and the assessee was entitled to have its appeal heard on merits on payment of the balance tax.

Ratio Decidendi: A deeming provision treating interest as tax for recovery purposes cannot be extended to a separate appellate-admission provision that expressly requires deposit only of tax or penalty; conditions precedent to appeal must be strictly construed according to their text.

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