Mandatory settlement scheme bars partial resolution of pending tax disputes; entire appeal or revision must be settled together.

The West Bengal Sales Tax (Settlement of Dispute) Act, 1999 requires a pending appeal or revision to be settled as a whole; once a certificate of settlement is issued, the appeal or revision is deemed withdrawn from the date of the Section 5 application. Because Section 10 is mandatory and refers to withdrawal of the entire proceeding, the statutory scheme does not permit piecemeal or partial settlement of only one part of the dispute. A settlement confined to part of the lis would undermine the object of bringing pending cases to an end, so the challenge to the notice failed and the applicant had to pursue settlement of the whole dispute.

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Issues: Whether a pending appeal or revision under the West Bengal Sales Tax (Settlement of Dispute) Act, 1999 can be settled only in part without settling the entire dispute.

Analysis: The scheme of the Act contemplates a pending appeal or revision being settled and, upon issuance of a certificate of settlement under Section 8, the appeal or revision is deemed to have been withdrawn from the date of the application under Section 5. The language of Section 10 is mandatory and refers to withdrawal of the appeal or revision itself, not to a segmented or partial disposition of only one aspect of the lis. Reading the settlement provisions as permitting piecemeal settlement would defeat the object of the statute, which is to bring pending cases to an end.

Conclusion: Partial settlement of a pending appeal or revision is not permissible under the Act; the settlement must cover the dispute in its entirety.

Final Conclusion: The challenge to the show-cause notice failed, and the petitioner was required to seek settlement of the whole dispute if it wished to invoke the statutory scheme.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the statutory language deems the appeal or revision to be withdrawn upon settlement, the settlement mechanism cannot be invoked for only a part of the pending dispute.

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