Balasubrahmanyan, J. - (1.)IN this reference made by the INcome-tax Appellate Tribunal, Madras, at the instance of the Commissioner of INcome-tax, Madras, under s. 256(1) of the I.T. Act, 1961, the following question of law had been referred for our opinion :
"Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the Appellate Tribunal was right in holding that the sum of Rs. 37,770 received by the assessee from the two concerns for sale of water is casual and non-recurring receipt and did not arise from business or the exercise of a profession or occupation by the assessee and, therefore, exempt from taxation under section 10(3) of the INcome-tax Act ?"

(2.)THE Tribunal, in their stated case, have given us a vivid account of the circumstances in which the receipt in question came about. THE assessee in the case is Mrs. Ramalakshmi Reddy. She was the owner of a nine-ground plot of land in Kodambakkam, Madras. She applied to the Corporation of Madras for approval of her plan to construct a residential building in her plot. With the plan sanctioned, she started construction work. Almost the first thing she did at the site was to find a spot and dig a well, for there was no municipal water supply in that locality and she needed water, initially, for building operations, and, thereafter, to serve sheer god fortune, she happened to strike a perennial spring at the spot where she cut for the well. THE water was good. It was also plentiful. This was just abut the time when the rest of Madras found itself in the throes of an acute water famine. Scarcity of water was not only a practical problem, but was apparently the main topic of conversation among city dwellers. In may, 1969, when the drought was at its worst, the assessee's husband had been to a Rotary meeting at Hotel Connemara. THEre he chanced to meet the secretary of Spencer and Co. Ltd., Madras. Spencer had an aerated water factory in the city. THEy were exeriencing production problems on account of depletion of their usual sources of water supply. When the assessee's husband heard about their difficulties, he made a sporting offer to the secretary then and there. He said that Spencers might unreservedly help themselves from his wife's well to help their factory out of their shortages. Spencers fell in with the suggestion, and later found that the assessee's well could meet all heir demands with ease. Thus began a steady baling out of lorry loads of water by Spencers from the assessee's domestic well. THE whole thing happened just like that, in this casual off-hand way. THEre was no thought in anyone's mind abut payment for the water. Later, however, Spencers did not, and could not, grudge paying the assessee at the rate of Rs. 50 a lorry, considering that they made quite a profit out of processing it in their aerated water factory. A neighbour of Spencers at Mount Road, the First National City Bank of New York, also had a water problem of their own. THEy needed potable water to keep their air-conditioning plant going. THEy too approached the assessee and obtained a like facility from her paying for their lorry loads at the same rate of Rs. 50 a load. In this way, by the end of the year, the assessee had received as much as Rs. 37,770 from both these concerns.
The ITO assessed this amount in its entirety as constituting the assessee's taxable income. He did not explain under what head to taxable income he was bringing the amount to charge. He simply described the amount in his assessment order as "profit from sale of water", and levied tax on it.

The assessee appealed against this assessment, saying that the receipts were casual receipts and they could not be treated as chargeable to income-tax. The AAC accepted this contention and deleted the amount from the assessment. He said that the money which the assessee got was the outcome entirely of fortuitous circumstances. He said that the assessee was but a housewife and the receipt was purely casual in her hands.

The I.T. Dept. appealed against this order to the Tribunal, contending that the receipt was not casual in nature, exempt as such from income-tax under s. 10(3) of the Act, but was assessable as income. The Tribunal negatived this contention. They pointed out that the receipt of money by the assessee was rendered possible by the drought conditions which the prevailed in the city, and, although the recurrence of a similar situation was not altogether beyond the realms of possibility, the receipt as such in the hands of the assessee must be regarded as casual and non-recurring. The Tribunal pointed out that the assessee was only a housewife and the receipts from sale of well-water did not arise in the course of any business which might be said to have been carried on by her.

In this reference, Mr. Jayaraman, learned counsel for the revenue, challenged the Tribunal's conclusion as based on a misconception. He said that much was made by the Tribunal of the circumstances that the assessee was a mere housewife and had had no previous business dealings to her credit. We do not, however, think that the Tribunal was wrong in drawing attention to the life style of the assessee. We regard it as a fact of the utmost importance to this case that the assessee was a married woman who was intent upon building a family residence and running her family in it and who had no thought of running business of any sort of her own.

(3.)MR. Jayaraman then urged that the Tribunal was wrong in thinking that the receipts in question were casual receipts. He said that receipts cannot properly be regarded as casual when they are known, foreseen, anticipated and provided for, as had happened in this case. He pointed out that what the assessee got was so much per lorry load of water, and this was nothing but a commercial price mutually agree to between the parties for the quantity sold. Receipts from a series of such sales, MR. Jayaraman said, cannot be regarded as casual or fortuitous.
Learned counsel's line of argument cannot be accepted in this case. The taxing enactment does not say that receipts obtained by a person musts be absolutely unforeseen or unimaginable in order that they may be regarded as non-taxable receipts. it is often said, and quite correctly, that windfall is not income. But, this does not mean that only manna from heaven is exempt from income-tax. What the courts have laid down is that a receipt cannot be treated as income where no characteristic of income can be detected in it. Where a person gets some receipt of money where he does not angle for it, or where it is not the product of an organized seeking after emoluments, or where it is merely a chance encounter with a venture, which while enriching him, does not form part of any scheme of profit-making, the idea of income is absent. The real basis for this conception of non-taxable casual receipt is that the transaction in question which produces it does not constitute any trade or an adventure in the nature of trade. As had been well said by Justice Rowlatt, where you have an isolated transaction which results in some gain or other to the taxpayer, either it is a casual receipt and is exempt as such, or it is a profit from an adventure in the nature of trade, and taxable as such. There can be no middle course open to the revenue to catch the receipt within the net of taxation, by viewing it in any other manner.

The I.T. Act, 1961, has been recently amended to include within the concept of taxable income certain kinds of windfall receipts such, for instance, as winnings from lotteries, winnings from horse races, prizes from cross-word puzzles, taking from card games of any sort and receipts from betting and gambling. Nevertheless, the Act even now continues to exclude from taxable income all other receipts of a casual or non-recurring nature, other than capital gains, other than additions to an exployee's remuneration and other than those which arise from an adventure in the nature of trade : See s. 10(3) of the Act. The real question in this case, therefore, is that given the fact that the assessee in this case was housewife with no known commercial proclivities of her own, can she yet be regarded as having indulged in an adventure in the nature of trade when she sold her well water to two concerns in Mount Road at a time of acute water scarcity, after they made overtures in that regard.