1955 (3) TMI 32

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....124 and 1125 M.E.) within the meaning of section 6(a) of the Travancore Income-tax Act corresponding to section 4B(a) of the Indian Income-tax Act". It was agreed at the Bar that we need concern ourselves only with the first portion of section 6(a) of the Travancore Income-tax Act, 1121 [Section 4B(a) of the Indian Act], which we have underlined in the extract given below:              "an individual is 'not ordinarily resident' in Travancore in any year if he has not been resident in Travancore in nine out of the ten years preceding that year or if he has not during the seven years preceding that year been in Travancore for a period of, or for periods amounting in al....

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....dent" in Travancore during the four accounting years above mentioned. The contention of the learned counsel for the Department is that in order to be considered as "not ordinarily resident" it is not enough if the assessee establishes, as he has done in this case, that he has not been "resident" in Travancore in nine out of the ten years preceding the accounting years concerned. According to him what he should establish is that he was "not resident" in Travancore "in nine out of the ten years" preceding the accounting years 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1948. 3. We cannot agree. The clause no doubt is "a model of ambiguous and obscure drafting" as observed by Sir Jamshedji Kanga in his "Law and Practice of Income-tax" (p. 362) but the basic outli....

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....deemed to be "ordinarily resident" in Travancore by the mere fact that it was "resident" in Travancore [section 6(c) corresponding to section 4B(c) of the Indian Act]. But such is not the case as far as an individual is concerned. In order to be "ordinarily resident" an individual has to be "resident" in Travancore in nine out of the ten years preceding the accounting year in respect of which the assessment is made. "Not resident" and "not ordinarily resident" are not positive concepts but only the converse of "resident" and "ordinarily resident" and a category of persons "not resident and not ordinarily resident" is impossible to imagine and unknown to the Act. 5. In other words the position was correctly summed up by Sir James Grigg du....