Reassessment requires a prior valid assessment and fresh material; eligibility certificates cannot be ignored when determining tax exemption.

Reassessment under the Orissa Sales Tax Act could not be sustained where no valid original assessment order had been made and no fresh material justified reopening. The authority was required to show an existing assessment and a factual basis for escaped or under-assessment; neither was present. The dealer's sales tax exemption, supported by a DIC eligibility certificate already filed before the assessing authority, could not be denied merely by ignoring that certificate. The competent sales tax authority was bound by the eligibility certificate for the relevant period, and the reassessment proceedings were therefore invalid and quashed.

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Issues: Whether reassessment proceedings under Section 12(8) of the Orissa Sales Tax Act, 1947 could be sustained in the absence of a valid original assessment order and in the absence of fresh material, particularly when the dealer's entitlement to sales tax exemption was supported by a DIC eligibility certificate.

Analysis: Reassessment is permissible only where an assessment has already been made and there is under-assessment or escaped assessment. Where no assessment order had been passed in the first instance, the reopening machinery could not be invoked. The reasons furnished for reopening were also unsustainable, since the exemption certificate had already been placed before the assessing authority and there was no material to show that the exemption availed had crossed the relevant ceiling. The departmental authority could not ignore or go behind the eligibility certificate issued by the competent industrial authority, which governed the dealer's entitlement to exemption for the relevant period.

Conclusion: The reassessment proceedings were invalid and liable to be set aside.

Final Conclusion: The challenge succeeded and the impugned order as well as the reassessment proceedings were quashed, leaving the dealer entitled to the benefit of the exemption certificate for the relevant assessment period.

Ratio Decidendi: Reassessment cannot be initiated without a prior valid assessment and some fresh material justifying reopening, and the sales tax authority cannot disregard a valid eligibility certificate issued by the competent industrial authority while determining exemption entitlement.

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