Common judgment in connected tax appeals supports one reference application; curable misdescription and no laches defeat rejection.

Where five connected income-tax appeals were consolidated and decided by a common judgment on the same controversy, a single reference application was competent because the controlling factor was the common adjudication, not the separate appeal numbers. The objection that separate reference applications were required therefore failed. A misdescription of respondents was treated as a curable formal defect and did not justify rejection of the proceeding. The article also notes that although later reference applications were time-barred, no inordinate delay or laches was shown to defeat constitutional relief where the writ petition had been filed within a reasonable time. The challenge to refusal to entertain the department's reference application was therefore unsustainable.

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Issues: (i) whether a single reference application was maintainable against a common judgment disposing of five connected income-tax appeals; (ii) whether the reference application could be rejected for misdescription of respondents and on the ground of delay or laches.

Issue (i): whether a single reference application was maintainable against a common judgment disposing of five connected income-tax appeals.

Analysis: The appeals arose out of the same assessment year, the same controversy, and a common judgment delivered after the appeals were consolidated and heard together. In substance and form there was one adjudication on a common subject-matter, so the challenge to that common judgment could not be defeated merely because the connected appeals had separate numbers or because separate reference applications were not filed in each matter. The principle was that the determinative factor is the common judgment and common controversy, not the number of appeal files.

Conclusion: A single reference application was maintainable, and the objection that separate reference applications were required failed.

Issue (ii): whether the reference application could be rejected for misdescription of respondents and on the ground of delay or laches.

Analysis: The omission to set out all respondent names with precision was a formal defect amounting only to misdescription, which ought to have been permitted to be corrected rather than treated as rendering the application a nullity. The later reference applications were rightly treated as time-barred, but the petitioners had filed the writ petition within a reasonable time, and no inordinate delay or laches was made out to defeat the relief under the constitutional jurisdiction invoked.

Conclusion: The objection based on misdescription and delay was rejected.

Final Conclusion: The Tribunal's refusal to entertain the department's timely reference application on the ground that one application could not cover the common judgment in the connected appeals was unsustainable, and the writ petition succeeded.

Ratio Decidendi: Where multiple appeals are consolidated and disposed of by one common judgment on a common controversy, a single reference or challenge to that common judgment is competent, and a formal misdescription of parties does not justify rejection of the proceeding if the defect is otherwise curable.

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