A.K. Mukherjea, J. - (1.) This is an appeal against a judgment and order passed by Banerjee, J. on July 6, 1965. The short facts of the case are as follows: The Petitioner carries on business both as a wholesale and a retail dealer in textile and other commodities. The Petitioner is a registered dealer under the Bengal Finance Sales Tax Act, 1941 (hereinafter referred to as the said Act). The Petitioner submitted its returns under the said Act for four quarters ending with Chait Sudi 8, 2011 S.Y. The Petitioner's gross turnover was shown as Rs. 14,96,186 -3 -3 and the taxable turnover was shown as Rs. 1,396 -7 -0. The Commercial Tax Officer concerned made an assessment on the Petitioner and imposed the tax of Rs. 12,758 -10 -0. In making this assessment the Commercial Tax Officer disallowed the exemption claimed by the Petitioner under Sec. 5(2)(a)(ii) of the said Act in respect of 12 items of deduction amounting to Rs. 2,47,364 -9 -6 on account of declarations for sales to registered dealers. The Commercial Tax Officer also imposed a penalty of Rs. 1,000 under Sec. 11(2) of the Act. On appeal, the Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes allowed one of the deductions which had been claimed by the Petitioner and disallowed by the Commercial Tax Officer. This was in regard to an item of sale of the value of Rs. 15,586 -15 -0. The tax demand was consequently reduced. The amount of penalty was also reduced to Rs. 300. On an application for revision of the said appellate order before the Additional Commissioner of the Commercial Taxes, the tax demand was further reduced as three other items of deduction were allowed in respect of three sales. No. content with this deduction the Petitioner again appealed to the Board of Revenue when another item of deduction was allowed by the Board of Revenue. Thus, out of the 12 items disallowed by the Commercial Tax Officer the Petitioner succeeded in getting relief in respect of five items in appellate and revisional proceedings under the said Act. Not content with these relief 's the Petitioner made an application under Article 226 of the Constitution and in that application was granted relief for two more items by Banerjee, J. in his Lordship's aforesaid order. As a result, four items remained still outstanding for which the Appellant is now claiming relief 's. We are concerned with only these four items of deductions claimed by the Appellant. I set out below the particulars of these four items: We shall deal with the contentions of the Appellant with regard to all these items serially.
(2.) We take the first two items which relate to the declaration forms obtained from the same dealer, namely, Kasturchand Surajmal. The declaration forms concerned are two in number, viz. D/266037 and D/308002. These two declarations had been rejected by the Additional Commissioner on two grounds. It was alleged that the purchasing dealer had obtained its registration certificate by issuing a false name and was, in fact, criminally prosecuted. We do not uphold this ground of rejection of the declaration forms because it appears from the order of the Additional Commissioner himself that the purchasing dealer in question had been acquitted after prosecution. But the declaration forms suffer from another serious infirmity. The forms do not mention the purpose of purchase. The statutory form of declaration under Rule 27(a) shows that there should be an indication in the form as to whether the purchases were for resale, use in manufacture of goods for sale, use in the execution of contracts or packing of goods for re -sale. The certificate as to the purpose of the purchase in question is the most essential item in the form of declaration. We have inspected the forms of declaration submitted by the purchasing dealer, namely, Kasturchand Surajmal. In the declaration forms the dealer does not strike out the items which are not applicable in his case. To understand this point it may be convenient to set out the form of certificate appearing in the statutory form No. XXIV ; Certified that the goods *ordered for in our purchase order No. ...dated.... purchased from you as per bill/cash memo, stated below...supplied under your challan No. ...dated...are for *resale use in manufacture of goods for sale use in the execution of contracts packing of goods for resale. and are covered by my/our registration certificate No. ...dated.... Date No. Amount Name of the purchasing dealer (in full).... Signature and status of the person singing the declaration .... * Strike out whichever is not applicable. ** Particulars of Bill/Cash Memo.
(3.) At the foot of the form of declaration is a note that from the four items indicating the various purposes for which the purchases can be made, those which do not apply in any particular case should be struck out. This the purchasing dealer had not done in the particular declaration forms with which we are concerned. We are of the opinion that the Commercial Tax Officer was perfectly justified in rejecting these two declaration forms. Unless he knew the purpose for which the purchase had been made it was not possible for him to ascertain whether the declaration forms were valid and whether the dealer who sold would be entitled to exemption for those sales. Mr. Sinha sought to rely in this connection on the judgment of a Division Bench of this High Court in Durga Sree Stores v/s. Board of Revenue, West Bengal (1962) : 67 C.W.N. 179 : (1964) 15 S.T.C. 186 where it was held that the mere non -striking of the alternatives in the several Forms (No. 11 A, 11B and XXIV) would not be a fatal defect. In our opinion, that case does not apply to the facts of the present case at all. In that case, their Lordships in giving their reasons for the particular conclusion to which they came observed: If the Certificate of Registration of any particular registered dealer would include those multiple purposes, than, in the Declaration form, all the alternatives taken together, may very well be the purpose of purchase and none of the entries in Form No. XXIV would require to be scored out. In that case, there was nothing to show that the certificates of registration of the dealers, to whom the goods in question were sold did not include those multiple purposes. In the instant case, however, it appears that the registration of the purchasing dealer included only one purpose. Therefore, in this case, if the non -relevant purposes which have no application are not struck out, it is impossible for the Commercial Tax Officer to know whether the dealer had bought the goods for the purpose for which alone he was allowed to buy against declaration forms. In these circumstances the Commercial Tax Officer would certainly be justified in rejecting such ambiguous declaration forms.;