P.K.BALASUBRAMANYAN,J - (1.) W . P. (T) 189 of 2003 relates to the assessment year 1998-99 under the Bihar Finance Act and W. P. (T) No. 193 of 2003 relates the assessment year 1997-98. The writ petitions are filed to quash the orders of assessment for the respective years under the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 and under the Bihar Finance Act, 1981. The facts relating to the two assessment years are more or less identical and hence need not be repeated.
(2.) THE petitioner, the assessee, filed quarterly returns under the Bihar Sales Tax Rules, 1976. In those quarterly returns, the petitioner showed its gross turnover as inter-State sales and paid the tax accordingly. After the period prescribed by section 16 (4) of the Bihar Finance Act for filing revised returns had expired, the assessee made applications on March 1, 2002 copies of which are annexed as annexure 1 series to these writ petitions, along with what it called revised returns. As against the original stand taken in the returns that the sales were inter-State sales, the stand attempted to be adopted in the statement filed and the revised returns attempted to be filed was that the sales were intra-State sales. No material as such was produced along with the returns and the statements to support the claim that the sales were intra-State sales. What was done was to place reliance on a decision of the Patna High Court in Luxmi Hardcoke Manufacturing Company v. State of Bihar 1999 (1) PLJR 713. It was contended that going by the ratio of that decision, the sales effected by the assessee had to be considered to be intra-State sales and were not, in fact, the inter-State sales. The assessing authority took the view that the stand adopted by the assessee when he filed returns was acceptable and that the attempt to file revised returns was belated and the revised returns could not be entertained in terms of the Act. The assessing authority also took the view that no material was produced to show that the sales were not in fact the inter-State sales as originally set out by the assessee himself. The assessing authority therefore accepted the returns filed by the assessee and completed the assessment.
(3.) THE assessee did not invoke the alternative remedy by way of appeal available to it. Nor did it invoke the revisional jurisdiction which it could have invoked. Instead, the assessee has filed these writ petitions on January 10, 2003 some eight months after the passing of the orders of assessment, challenging the said orders on the ground that the orders were against the ratio of the decision in Luxmi Hardcoke Manufacturing Company v. State of Bihar 1999 (1) PLJR 713. Admittedly, the assessee filed quarterly returns by adopting the position that its sales were the inter-State sales. No doubt, filing of returns or adopting a stand by the assessee in that return might not estop the assessee from establishing that as a matter of fact, the sales were not inter-State sales. But then, the burden would be on the assessee to show that the stand originally adopted by it in its return was on a mistaken basis or was the result of a mistake on facts or in law.;