TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (9) TMI 32
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....he poor through Annakshetra, running and organising medical camps and dissemination of spiritual and philosophical teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. The assessee had filed its application seeking approval under section 80G on 29.09.2022. The said application was initially rejected by the learned CIT(E) vide order dated 20.03.2023, inter alia, on the grounds of non-registration under the Rajasthan Public Trust Act, 1959; that the assessee was a religious trust and, therefore, not eligible for approval under section 80G; expenditure having been incurred for religious purposes; and that genuineness of the activities was not established. 3. Against the said order, the assessee had preferred an appeal before the Tribunal and the Jaipur Bench of the Tribunal, vide order dated 07.08.2023 in ITA No.258/JP/2023, restored the matter to the file of the learned CIT(E) for deciding the application afresh after affording reasonable opportunity to the assessee to furnish the requisite documents. Pursuant thereto, the assessee filed detailed submissions dated 15.12.2025 and 21.01.2026 along with supporting documents and accounts. However, the learned CIT(E) has once again rejected the application....
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.... the impugned order. In Form No.10AB, against Column 27(a), namely, whether the institution had incurred any expenditure of religious nature, the assessee had specifically answered "No". However, while filling Column 27(b), the data-entry operator inadvertently copied the figure of the entire expenditure of the society in the column meant for religious expenditure. Thus, for the relevant three years, the amounts of Rs.30,17,917, Rs.39,06,678 and Rs.39,70,210 appearing as religious expenditure were exactly the same as the total expenditure reflected in the audited accounts for those respective years. According to the learned counsel, this itself demonstrates that it was merely a clerical/data-entry error and could not have been regarded as an admission that the entire expenditure of the society was religious in nature. 7. It was further submitted that even if the expenditure specifically debited under the head "Mandir Pooja" is assumed to be religious expenditure, it was only Rs.65,758, Rs.77,629 and Rs.1,44,968 for the three relevant years against gross receipts of Rs.44,88,854, Rs.47,40,122 and Rs.49,62,046, respectively, constituting merely 1.46%, 1.64% and 2.92% of the gross ....
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....eneficiaries and the actual nature of its activities. 11. In this regard, the judgment of the Hon'ble jurisdictional Rajasthan High Court in Umaid Charitable Trust v. Union of India [2008] 307 ITR 226 (Raj.) assumes considerable significance. The Hon'ble High Court held that unless the object of the charitable trust itself is to spend its income for a particular religion and such intention is discernible from the trust deed, approval under section 80G cannot be denied merely because some expenditure may have a religious complexion. Their Lordships further observed that it is the dominant object of the trust which is important and the expenditure incurred has to be appreciated in the light of the objects for which the charitable institution was constituted. 12. Tested on the aforesaid principle, we are unable to concur with the conclusion of the learned CIT(E) that the assessee is a religious trust merely because its objects include dissemination of the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita undoubtedly has profound spiritual provenance; but the question before us is not one of theological classification. What is relevant for the purpose of section 80G is whether di....
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....lement, namely "Mandir Pooja" expenditure, was only Rs.65,758, Rs.77,629 and Rs.1,44,968 against gross receipts of Rs.44,88,854, Rs.47,40,122 and Rs.49,62,046 for the respective years. The corresponding percentages work out to 1.46%, 1.64% and 2.92%. Thus, even if the entire expenditure under the head "Mandir Pooja" is treated as expenditure of religious nature, it remains well below the threshold of 5%. 16. This brings us to section 80G(5B), which itself provides a statutory latitude in a case where an institution incurs expenditure of a religious nature not exceeding 5% of its total income. Therefore, even assuming for the sake of argument that some incidental expenditure of the assessee possesses a religious character, that by itself cannot defeat the assessee's eligibility when such expenditure remains within the statutory limit. The learned CIT(E), instead of examining the actual expenditure with reference to the audited accounts, proceeded on an apparent clerical error in Form 10AB and consequently arrived at the figure of 54.44%. Such a conclusion, in the face of the underlying accounts and the reconciliation placed on record, cannot be sustained. 17. The matter may al....