TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1981 (5) TMI 55
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....swas in area. The land formed part of the estate of village Nangal Dewat and the said village constituted "Gaon Sabha" with identical name as established under s. 150 of the Delhi Land Reforms Act, 1954 (Act No. 8 of 1954) (In the appeal before us there is no dispute about computation as such of capital gains. Neither is there any dispute about items of income from house property nor bank interest income.) 4. The assessee went in first appeal against the said assessment and contended that it was not liable to be charged to tax in respect of profit arising from the transfer of the said land. The Commr. (A) accepted the assessee's contention and directed the ITO to exclude the amount of Rs. 2,17,815 from computation of assessee's total income. In broad, assessee's contention before the Commr. (A) was that the land in question was not a capital asset within the meaning of s. 2(14). The Commr. (A) at the outset reproduced the material portion of the said s. 2(14) of the IT Act. Vide para 2 of his order, the Commr. (A) purported to summarise the assessee's contention as raised before the ITO and as disposed of by the ITO on the aspect of the land in question not being capital asset a....
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.... (A) and is in appeal before us. 9. Shri T.A. Ramachandran appeared for the Revenue, assisted by Shri. C.V. Gupte, Senior Deptl. Rep. On the assessee's side apart from Shri R.P. Bansal, some other parties also appeared as intervenes on the assumption that decision of the bench in the instant case might effect the appeals connected with their assessments involving acquisitions of other land situated in the same village Nangal Dewat. 10.Main lineof attack of Shri Ramachandran against the Commr. (A)'s finding was that with the enactment of Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 w.e.f. 28th Dec., 1957, the Gaon Sabhas were left with no important municipal functions and that the power of Gaon Sabhas in the matter of levying taxes was also partly taken away. In particular, our attention was drawn to s. 505 of the said Corporation Act. 11. Thus, the basic controversy between the parties is as to whether the land in question (which is admittedly agricultural land), is within the meaning of exclusionary item (iii) (a) of s. 2(14), IT Act, situate in any area- -which is comprised within the jurisdiction of Municipality, and -which has a population of 10,000 or more according to....
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....gainst the assessment, certain deduction as admissible under s. 84 of the IT Act. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court held that such a claim could not be legitimately entertained by the first appellate authority in the absence of necessary evidentiary material having been produced before the ITO as also in the absence of such claim having been raised by the assessee before the ITO. In this connection, the Supreme Court was pleased to observe that when the ITO examined the matter of taxability of a certain item, the ITO could not be said to have examined the aspect as to its non-taxability also. It is clear from the facts of that case that the expression "non-taxability" was used with reference to the deduction that was being claimed by the assessee under s. 84 of the IT Act as aforesaid. In the present case, however, when the aspect as to taxability of profits arising from transfer of land in question was examined by the ITO, such examination would, automatically also include the other aspect that the land in question not being a capital asset within the meaning of s. 2(14), the profits arising therefrom could not attract the provisions pertaining to computation of capital gains. ....
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....at Revenue's argument here also was not acceptable as simply by following the ruling of a High Court as to the meaning and scope of a provision, the Tribunal cannot be said to go into the vires of that provisions. 18. The third point raised on revenue's side in this regard was that in Ambalal Maganlal vs. Union of India & Anr. (1975) 98 ITR 237 (Guj) a view opposite to the one in Manubhai's case had been taken. Firstly, we consider that in the case of Ambalal Maganlal the proposition that profits arising from transfer of agricultural land which was used for agricultural purposes would constitute within the meaning of s. 2(1) (i) of the IT Act revenue derived from land used for agricultural purposes was not considered at all. Thus, the two rulings under consideration could not be said to oppose each other. That bring the position, CIT, Vidarbha vs. Smt. Godavari Devi Saraf (1978) 113 ITR 589 (Bom) could be applicable and Tribunal would feel bound to follow theBombayruling in the case of Manubhai. In the alternative, even if it is assumed that the ruling in Muna Bhai and Ambalal were opposed to each other, we consider that in view of the settled proposition that where two views ar....
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....nistration and development." It is significant to note that though certain provisions of the said Panchayat Act stood deleted when DMC Act came into force, that parliament did not consider it necessary to amend the said Preamble, even though practice of amending Preamble to an Act could not be unknown to the Parliament. This implies that even after the amendments affected in the Panchayat Act with the coming into force of the DMC Act, certain provisions did survive in the Panchayat Raj Act, so as to justify continuance of the said Preamble, the primary object of which was to establish and develop local-self government in the rural areas of Delhi. 23. The matter could be looked at from another angle. The comparative chart of provisions reproduced in para 6 hereinabove refers in nine different provisions of the DMC Act. Eight of these items refer to various clauses of ss. 42 and 43 of the DMC Act. Sec. 42 in turn specified obligatory functions of the Delhi Municipal Corporation and s. 43 specified the discretionary functions thereof. However, it would be difficult to accept that the functions specified in the said two sections of the DMC Act were not municipal functions. When t....