TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2020 (12) TMI 276
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....nment. While making payment for the charges for transportation, Tripura Value Added Tax department ("VAT department" for short) collected tax at source @ 6% on the bill amount. All the payments were made after such deduction. The total deduction so made for the period in question came to Rs. 2,36,569/-. Petitioner has produced at Annexure A/3 collectively the payment vouchers which reflect the amount of tax collected at source by the VAT department. [4] According to the petitioner, he had merely transported the goods such as fertilisers, seeds, food grains etc. for the State of Tripura. In the process, there was no sale or transfer of the right to use the goods or execution of work order and that therefore; this transaction did not invite Value Added Tax ("VAT" for short). [5] The petitioner would point out that identical situation was considered by this Court in WP(C) No.127/2013 and connected petitions in case of Sri Dipak Bhattacharjee Vs. State of Tripura & others. The Division Bench by a judgment dated 7th January, 2014 held that even the expansion of the term "transfer of property in goods", would not cover the present situation. It was held that when a person transp....
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....e relevant time. After obtaining information under the RTI, he approached the authorities. When the authorities did not respond to the petitioner's request for refund of tax, he filed these petitions. He submitted that when the levy and collection of tax itself was without authority of law, the petitions for refund of such tax so collected, cannot be rejected only on the ground of delay and laches. In this context, counsel relied on following decisions : (i) M/s Dheri Rohtas Light Railway Company Ltd. Vs. District Board, Bhojpur & Ors. reported in (1992) 2 SCC 598, (ii) U.P. Pollution Control Board & Ors. Vs. Kanoria Industrial Ltd. and Another reported in (2001) 2 SCC 549, (iii) Salonah Tea Company Ltd. Vs. Superintendent of Taxes, Nowgong & Ors. reported in (1988) 69 STC 290. [9] Counsel submitted that the decision of the Supreme Court in case of Mafatlal Industries Ltd. & Ors. Vs. Union of India & Ors. reported in (1997) 5 SCC 536 was rendered in the background of the provisions of the Customs and Central Excise Acts where statutory provisions governed the question of refund of tax. The ratio laid down therein therefore, cannot be applied in the present case since the Tri....
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....nuary, 2020 the petitioner was totally silent about his contention that though no tax was payable, it was deducted. In our opinion, the petitions are hopelessly delayed. There is no explanation for long and inordinate delay in filing these petitions. Laches on part of the petitioner become more obvious and glaring when one considers that for other financial years the petitioner himself had approached the High Court in WP(C) No.177/2015 and other petitions and which petitions were allowed by the High Court by a judgment dated 3rd September, 2015. Even before that the Division Bench in Case of Shri Dipak Bhattacharjee (supra) had rendered a judgment on 7th January, 2014 on which the petitioner is heavily relying. The law laid down by the Division Bench of this Court was thus clear as far back as in January, 2014 of which the petitioner himself had taken advantage in the year 2015. For some inexplicable reason the petitioner never took up the case of deduction of tax in these years which he has now raised in these petitions. At the time of making payments to the petitioner, VAT was deducted which according to the petitioner was not payable and which is also the view of this Court. In ....
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....he Contract Act, or for that matter Section 17(1)(c) of the Limitation Act, 1963, has no application to such a claim for refund. * * * (viii) The decision of this Court in STO v. Kanhaiya Lal Mukundlal Saraf [1959] SCR 1350 must be held to have been wrongly decided insofar as it lays down or is understood to have laid down propositions contrary to the propositions enunciated in (i) to (vii) above. It must equally be held that the subsequent decisions of this Court following and applying the said propositions in Kanhaiya Lal have also been wrongly decided to the above extent. This declaration - or the law laid down in Propositions (i) to (vii) above - shall not however entitle the State to recover to taxes/duties already refunded and in respect whereof no proceedings are pending before any authority/Tribunal or Court as on this date. All pending matters shall, however, be governed by the law declared herein notwithstanding that the tax or duty has been refunded pending those proceedings, whether under the orders of an authority, Tribunal or Court or otherwise." [13] We are conscious that the entire focus in the said decision was on Customs and Central Excise duties under....