Separate taxation of HUF and individual agricultural income bars clubbing absent express statutory authority.

Agricultural income from ancestral Hindu undivided family property and from property separately inherited on reversion could not be aggregated in one assessment under the U.P. Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1948. The ancestral estate was HUF property, with sons taking an interest by birth, while the reverted property remained the individual assessee's separate property. Because the charging provision taxed the total agricultural income of each person and treated a Hindu undivided family as a distinct taxable unit, section 10 only provided a special mode of assessment of coparceners and did not authorise clubbing of family and individual income. The assessment had to remain separate, and the department's attempt to combine the two incomes failed.

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Issues: Whether the agricultural income from ancestral family property and from property inherited on reversion could be clubbed in the hands of one assessee for assessment under the U.P. Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1948.

Analysis: The ancestral estate devolved from the assessee's father and constituted Hindu undivided family property, in which his sons had an interest by birth. The estate obtained on reversion from a female ancestor was separate property of the assessee and did not belong to the Hindu undivided family. The charging provision taxed the total agricultural income of every person, and the definition of "person" treated a Hindu undivided family as a distinct taxable unit. Section 10 only prescribed a special mode of assessment of coparceners within a Hindu undivided family and did not authorise amalgamation of the family income with the individual income of one coparcener.

Conclusion: The two incomes could not be clubbed together; the assessment of the Hindu undivided family and the individual assessee had to remain separate, and the answer was against the department and in favour of the assessee.

Ratio Decidendi: Where one source of income belongs to a Hindu undivided family and another belongs to the individual member separately, the charging provision cannot be used to aggregate the two incomes in a single assessment unless the statute expressly permits such clubbing.

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