Krishna Iyer, J. - (1.) A nascent Chapter (Chapter XIXA) in the Income Tax Act, 1961, enacted by the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Act, 1975, whose beneficiaries are ordinarily those whose tax liability is astronomical and criminal culpability perilous, falls for decoding by this Court in the appeal by the Commr. of Income-tax (Central), Calcutta, against an adverse order made by the Settlement Commission. Functionally speaking, this Chapter, engrafted in partial implementation of the Wanchoo Committee Report, provides for settlement of huge tax disputes and immunity from criminal proceedings by a Commission to be constituted by the Central Government when approached without objection from the Tax Department. It is based on the debatable policy, fraught with dubious potentialities in the context of Third World conditions of political peculium and bureaucratic abetment, that composition and collection of public revenue from tycoons is better than prosecution of their tax-related crime and litigation for total revenue recovery. A social audit of the working of this Chapter in action and its fall-out may benefit the nation by information about who the true beneficiaries of this legislation are and whether there is more than meets the eye. The Wanchoo Committee which recommended this step titled its Chapter meaningfully as "Black Money and Tax Evasion" and the Act itself was passed and brought into force during the era of Emergency which was marked by speed and silence and hushed politico-official operations.
(2.) Be that as it may, fiscal philosophy and interpretative technology must be on the same wavelength if legislative policy is to find fulfilment in the enacted text. That is the challenge to judicial resourcefulness the present appeals offer, demanding, as it does, holistic perspective and harmonious construction of a whole chapter, especially a complex provision therein, so that a balance may be struck between purpose and result without doing violence to statutory language and social values. The Chapter is fresh and the issue is virgin; and that makes the judicial adventure hazardous, compounded by the involved and obscure drafting of the bunch of provisions in Chapter XIXA.
(3.) A few facts must be narrated and the anatomy of the Chapter projected at this stage, so that a hang of the controversy may be got and its just resolution sought.;