1982 (3) TMI 118

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....-1980. The issue in this appeal is whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the AAC was justified in treating the birds as not animals and denying the assessee exemption available under section 2(e) of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957 ("the Act"). The assessment year involved is 1976-77. 2. This appeal was fixed after due notice to the parties but when the appeal was called on for he....

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.... under the name and style of Empire Farm, Chandigarh, of which the assessee was a partner. Therefore, for the reasons given in that case he disallowed the exemption. 4. The AAC, following the reasons given in the appellate order in the case of Smt. Birinder Kaur, dismissed the appeal of the assessee. The appeal has been dismissed on the ground that the exemption claimed under section 2(e)(2)(i)....

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....e word "animals" in the Act and that interpretation of the same term in other Acts cannot be imported so as to give the assessee benefit of this exemption. The AAC has even gone to the extent of saying that "the plain dictionary meaning of the word 'animals' would not include 'birds' in this category". The Chamber's Twentieth Century Dictionary (revised edn.) defines "animal" as "an organised bein....

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....and the forelimbs so modified as to form wings by means of which most species fly in the air." The learned WTO has not specified the dictionary from which he took the definition of the word "bird". But even according to the dictionary meaning that he relied upon and which does not appear to have been properly appreciated, the word "bird" itself connotes an animal because vertebrates are nothing bu....