1971 (3) TMI 25

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....defined in the Gift-tax Act, 1958 ?" The case relates to two assessees, Shmt. Sharbati Devi and Munshi Lal. The assessment year concerned is 1965-66, corresponding to the previous-year which ended on March 31, 1965. The two assessees held one-half share each in a building situated in Ram Nagar, Delhi. During the previous year, each of the two assessees impressed his or her share in the said property with the character of joint family property. Question arose whether the assessees were liable to pay gift-tax because of their impressing their shares in the property with the character of joint family property. The Gift-tax Officer and the Appellate Assistant Commissioner decided the matter against the assessees and held that they were liabl....

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....n by him into the common stock with the intention of abandoning his separate claim therein. The separate property of a Hindu ceases to be separate property and acquires the characteristics of joint family or ancestral property not by any physical mixing with his joint family or his ancestral property but by his own volition and intention by his waiving and surrendering his separate rights in it as separate property. The act by which the coparcener throws his separate property in the common stock is a unilateral act. There is no question of either the family rejecting or accepting it. By his individual volition he renounces his individual right in that property and treats it as a property of the family. No sooner he declares his intention to....

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....lf share in the common hotchpotch would be tantamount to transfer of property as contemplated by section 2(xxiv)(d) of the Gift-tax Act. According to that definition, "transfer of property" means any disposition, conveyance, assignment, settlement, delivery, payment or other alienation of property and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes : " (d) any transaction entered into by any person with intent thereby to diminish directly or indirectly the value of his own property an to increase the value of the property of any other person." In order to invoke sub-clause (d) of clause (xxiv) of section 2 it has to be shown that there was a transaction entered into by one person with another. The above clause cannot apply....