Writ jurisdiction and deemed assessment limit reassessment where no prior assessment order exists under the tax statute.

Writ jurisdiction remained available where reassessment was challenged as wholly without authority, despite an appellate remedy, so the Article 226 petition was maintainable. Reassessment under Section 22(1) of the Chhattisgarh Value Added Tax Act, 2005 was invalid because no original assessment order had been passed and the assessee's liability had already stood as a deemed assessment under Section 21(2). The statutory fiction could not be extended beyond its limited purpose, and Section 22(1) required an existing order of assessment or reassessment. The consequential penalty under Section 22(2) also failed once the reassessment lacked jurisdiction.

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Issues: (i) Whether a writ petition challenging a reassessment order was maintainable despite the availability of an appellate remedy. (ii) Whether reassessment under Section 22(1) of the Chhattisgarh Value Added Tax Act, 2005, and the consequential penalty under Section 22(2), were valid when no original assessment order had been passed and the assessment had stood deemed under Section 21(2).

Issue (i): Whether a writ petition challenging a reassessment order was maintainable despite the availability of an appellate remedy.

Analysis: The existence of an appellate remedy did not bar writ jurisdiction where the challenge was that the reassessment had been initiated and completed without jurisdiction. The Court treated the objection as one going to the very authority of the assessing officer to act, and held that such a jurisdictional challenge could be examined under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.

Conclusion: The writ petitions were maintainable.

Issue (ii): Whether reassessment under Section 22(1) of the Chhattisgarh Value Added Tax Act, 2005, and the consequential penalty under Section 22(2), were valid when no original assessment order had been passed and the assessment had stood deemed under Section 21(2).

Analysis: Section 21(2) created a deemed assessment where the statutory return requirements were satisfied, and such deemed assessment was specifically liable to reassessment only under Section 21(3) within the prescribed time. By contrast, Section 22(1) could be invoked only where an assessment or reassessment had already been made, because the provision itself proceeds from the existence of an "order of assessment". Since no original assessment order had been passed, the jurisdictional fact required for Section 22(1) was absent. The legal fiction of deemed assessment could not be extended beyond the purpose for which it was created, and the penalty provision under Section 22(2) also could not survive once the reassessment itself was without jurisdiction.

Conclusion: Reassessment under Section 22(1) was invalid and the penalty under Section 22(2) was unsustainable.

Final Conclusion: The reassessment orders and the penalties founded on them were quashed, and the writ petitions succeeded.

Ratio Decidendi: Reassessment can be made only when the statute predicates it on the existence of a prior assessment order, and a deeming assessment cannot be reopened under a provision that applies only to an actual assessment or reassessment already made.

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