TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1976 (7) TMI 135
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....KRISHNA IYER, J.-This batch of cases between a State Government (Andhra Pradesh) and the Union Government suggests the need for litigative discipline for our governments and a periodical post-auditing in that behalf. And now we make good this inaugural observation by narrating briefly the necessary facts and examining closely the few points tersely presented by the Additional Solicitor-General appearing for the common appellant in all these cases. Our Constitution mandates on the State welfare activities and con. templates its undertaking distribution of commodities essential to the life of the community at large through trade and business directly organised or in other suitable ways. Foodgrains and fertilisers are strategic items and th....
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....ss and, therefore, liable to tax under the Central Act. The other three appeals were duly dismissed and these successive defeats notwithstanding, the Central Government's Joint Director moved the High Court in all the six cases. Undaunted by discomfiture there, the appellant has arrived here, discretion not being the better part of valour even where public money is involved. The learned Additional Solicitor-General has rightly discarded some of the meteorical but lifeless contentions urged before the High Court based on Part IV of the Constitution. The surviving points pressed before us may now be set out and discussed. A hyper-technical point half-heartedly urged may be mentioned first, it being easy of rejection. Argued counsel t....
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.... or selling goods, and includes a Government which carries on such business." Quite plain is the conclusion from a bare reading of this provision that a government (ergo any government) is by express inclusive definition made a dealer. The Central Government being a government is squarely covered by the definition. Nor does section 9 rescue the appellant. True it is that the tax shall be levied by the Government of India. But it does so for the benefit of the other State Governments and indeed through the machinery of the State tax agency. Section 9(3) reads: "The proceeds in any financial year of any tax, including any penalty, levied and collected under this Act in any State (other than a Union territory) on behalf of the Government....
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....to do so and because it is obligated to ensure even distribution of vital goods for the needy sections of the people. We see no difficulty in inferring that the systematic activity of buying foodgrains and fertilisers and selling them by the State, although in fulfilment of a beneficent national policy is nevertheless trade or business. Necessarily, government becomes a "dealer" by definition and carries on "business" within the meaning of the Central Act and the State Act (omitting for a moment the distinction in the two definitions based upon the motive to make gain or profit). The conclusion, therefore, is inevitable that the appellant, representing the Central Government, is rightly held to be the assessee. We may hasten to mention t....