YASHWANT VARMA - (1.) Heard Shri R. R. Agrawal, learned senior counsel assisted by Shri Suyash Agarwal for the revisionist-assessee and Shri A.C. Tripathi, learned standing counsel for the respondent.
(2.) This revision has been preferred against a judgment and order of the Tribunal dated 3 November 2007 remanding the matter for fresh consideration before the assessing authority. The assessment proceedings themselves relate to the Central Sales Act 1956 [1956 Act] and certain stock transfers which were purportedly made by the assessee in the assessment year 2003-04. During the course of the assessment year in question, with reference to the 1956 Act, the assessing authority appears to have held against the assessee based upon certain findings which came to be recorded in the course of a survey of its business premises on 10 September 2004. Consequent to certain observations and conclusions recorded in the course of the survey, the case of the assessee of a stock transfer was rejected. In the first round of litigation, the Tribunal by its order dated 13 March 2007, remitted the matter back to the assessing authority reminding him of the obligation to scrutinise each individual transaction and only thereafter frame its conclusions with respect to the contentions of the assessee that the goods which had left the State were not pursuant to any transactions of sale or purchase but a mere stock transfer. Although this caveat was placed by the Tribunal in its judgment dated 13 March 2007, Shri Agrawal would contend that the assessing authority without paying heed to the said directions again came to conclude against the revisionist. When the matter traveled to the board of the Tribunal on the second occasion, it found it appropriate to remand the matter for fresh consideration. However, while remitting the matter to the assessing authority, the Tribunal made the following observations:-
(3.) Shri Agrawal submits that it is these observations which clearly constrict the discretion vesting in the assessing authority and are clearly prejudicial to the assessee. He submits, while relying upon a decision rendered by a Full Bench of the Court in Ram Dayal v. Commissioner of Sales Tax AIR 1979 Allahabad 267 which holds that the jurisdiction of the assessing authority stands circumscribed by the directions of the Tribunal and that his enquiry must stand restricted thereto, that the observations made by the Tribunal would compel it to decide against the revisionist. Shri Agrawal has also referred to an order of the Tribunal dated 30 October 2015 rendered inter partes, albeit for a separate assessment year, to contend that on the basis of the very same observations made by the Tribunal in the judgment impugned, the assessing authority had proceeded to hold against the assessee. This exercise undertaken by the assessing authority was, in the submission of Shri Agrawal, rightly interfered with and set at naught by the Tribunal subsequently. In view thereof he would submit that the revisionist-assessee has a valid apprehension that the assessing authority would again hold against the assessee.;