DEEPAK ROSHAN,J. - (1.) Heard learned senior counsel for the petitioner company and learned counsel for the respondent State.
(2.) The petitioner company is aggrieved by the impugned order of penalty dated 29.1.2016, passed by the respondent No. 3, Deputy Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, South Circle, Ranchi Division, Ranchi, whereby penalty of Rs. 10,43,43,655/- was imposed upon the petitioner company, under Section 40(2) of the JVAT Act, for the alleged concealment of purchases made by the company to the tune of Rs. 69,56,24,365.36, which, according to the Assessing Authority were taxable due to the fact that the goods were purchased for being sold, on which no tax was paid. Upon appeal filed against the said order of penalty, the Appellate Authority confirmed the order, by its order dated 24.5.2016, and the revision, filed against the same, was also dismissed by the Commercial Taxes Tribunal, Jharkhand, Ranchi, (herein after referred to as the 'Tribunal'), by Judgment dated 17.4.2017, passed in Revision Petition No. RN 88 of 2016. Aggrieved thereby, the present writ application has been preferred.
(3.) The facts giving rise to the present writ application are that the petitioner company was engaged in the business of installation and transmission of electricity and was granted transmission license, under Sections 14/15 of the Electricity Act, 2003, for the purposes of installing the transmission line in the span of 111 Kms. in the State of Jharkhand, for which, work contract was also issued to the petitioner company. In order to satisfy the work contract, the petitioner company was required to make purchases of the capital goods from outside the State of Jharkhand and to bring those materials within the State of Jharkhand for installation of the transmission facilities. The petitioner company applied for registration, under the JVAT Act and though, it was granted registration on 15.11.2014, but the said registration was mistakenly obtained under the category 'Wholesale and Retail Trade', which necessarily indicated that the purchases that were made by the petitioner company were meant for sale. On realising the mistake, an application for amendment of the registration certificate was also filed by the petitioner company, but no order could be passed thereon. In the meantime, the petitioner company purchased the goods worth Rs. 69,56,24,365.36 from outside the State of Jharkhand, which were brought into the State of Jharkhand, by using 356 numbers of Sugam-G challans. As it was detected that these purchases were not shown in the returns filed by the company, accordingly, treating these purchases to be concealed by the company and also treating these purchases to be meant for sale of the goods, the tax on these purchases were assessed at Rs. 3,47,81,218.27, and based thereon, three times penalty of Rs. 10,43,43,655/- was imposed upon the petitioner company, under Section 40(2) of the JVAT Act. The demand notice was issued only for the penalty, which clearly gave the indication that the assessment of the tax was notional, only for the purpose of determining the amount of penalty.;