1993 (3) TMI 70

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....iable to be included in the assessee's total income because it is an agricultural income ? (2) Whether, while giving effect to the order of the High Court, wherein the question was answered in favour of the Revenue, the Tribunal can re-examine the issue from a different perspective and come to conclusion different from that of the High Court?" The respondent is an assessee to income-tax. It is a public limited company. We are concerned with the assessment year 1978-79. The assessee is running tea and rubber plantations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. substantial part of its income is agricultural income. In the income-tax proceedings, the assessee claimed that a sum of Rs. 10,25,086 received by it by way of rubber replantation subsidy canno....

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.... "For the reasons stated by us in I.T.R. Nos. 352 and 353 of 1982 (CIT v. Malayalam Plantations Ltd. [1987] 168 ITR 63 (Ker)), question No.2 is answered in the negative, i.e.. in favour of the Revenue and against the assessee." In pursuance of the answer given by this court, the matter came up before the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal for passing final orders under section 260(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961. At that time, the assessee took up the plea that it had an alternate contention before the Commissioner of Income-tax in the same proceedings to the effect that even if the rubber replantation subsidy is income, the receipt is agricultural in character and so, the said plea should be adjudicated while passing the consequential order u....

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.... the assessee is agricultural income and so not includible as income under the Income-tax Act. It is thereafter at the instance of the Revenue that the questions of law formulated hereinabove have been referred for the decision of this court. We heard counsel. It is common ground that, in view of the Bench decision of this court in Teekoy Rubbers (India) Ltd. v. State of Kerala [1966] KLT 1008, the amount received by the assessee as rubber replantation subsidy is not agricultural income. Delivering the judgment of the Bench in Teekoy Rubbers (India) Ltd.s' case [1966] KLT 1008, Govindan Nair, J., held in paragraph 4 of the judgment thus ". . . the sum of Rs. 50,388 received by the company as rubber c. replanting subsidy is not agri....