Association of individuals requires legal representative holding, not mere co-ownership or joint management of agricultural land.

Mere co-ownership, joint residence, joint cultivation or common management of agricultural land does not, by itself, create an association of individuals under the Agricultural Income-tax Act. The decisive requirement is that property must be held by one person for himself or for another in a legally recognised representative capacity; absent that, spouses cannot be assessed as an association of individuals. Questions about title standing in one spouse's name, factual beneficial ownership, or a land-exchange sanction were treated as irrelevant to that legal test. The reference was answered in favour of the assessee, and assessment on that footing could not stand.

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Issues: Whether the husband and wife could be treated as an association of individuals under the Agricultural Income-tax Act on the basis of joint residence, joint cultivation and management of lands, and related factual circumstances.

Analysis: Under the statutory definition of "person" and "association of individuals", the decisive requirement is that the property must be held by one person for himself or for another in a legally recognised representative capacity. Mere co-ownership, defined shares, or common management for convenience does not create an association of individuals. The circumstances that some land stood in one spouse's name but was found in fact to belong to the other, or that an exchange of land had been sanctioned under the land reforms law, were held to be irrelevant to the legal question whether the spouses formed such an association.

Conclusion: The spouses could not be treated as an association of individuals; the question was answered in the negative, in favour of the assessee.

Final Conclusion: The reference succeeded to the extent that the assessment could not proceed on the footing that the spouses constituted an assessable association of individuals, and the ancillary escaped-assessment question did not arise.

Ratio Decidendi: Mere co-ownership or joint management of property does not constitute an association of individuals unless one person holds the property in a legally recognised representative capacity for the benefit of others.

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