- (1.) Special leave is granted.
(2.) These appeals are by the Revenue and are directed against the order dated 20/05/1983 of the division bench of the High court of Punjab and Haryana in L. P. A. Nos. 444 and 445 of 1982 dismissing the appeal preferred by the appellant against and affirming the orders dated 13/01/1983 of the learned Single Judge in Civil Writ Petition Nos. 2054 and 2170 of 1982. By those writ petitions, the respondents assailed orders of assessment to sales tax under the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973 bringing to tax a turnover of sales of articles of food said to have been sold by the respondents in their restaurants.
(3.) Against the respective orders of assessment the respondents filed appeals provided for in the statute. Section 39 (5) of the Act contemplates that no appeal shall be entertained unless it is filed within sixty days from the date of the order appealed against and the appellate authority is satisfied that the amount of tax assessed has been paid. The proviso to that sub-section, however, invests the appellate authority with the discretion to waive the requirement of the payment of tax as a precondition to the entertainability of the appeal and to proceed to consider it on the merits subject to the appellant furnishing a bank guarantee or adequate security for the tax. In the present cases, appeals envisaged and permitted by the statute had been lodged. However, respondents were aggrieved by the order of the appellate authority declining to exercise the discretion under proviso to Section 39 (5) in favour of respondents and calling upon them to deposit the tax due as a condition for the appeals being heard on the merits. Respondents appear to have assailed the order declining to exempt them from payment of the tax in further appeals; but without any success.;