MUNICIPAL COUNCIL Vs. BOMBAY COMPANY LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The facts relating to this case are clearly set out in the judgment of the learned Trial Judge and it is unnecessary to repeat them. I considered the whole position as it stood under the Act of 1884 in the case of Clan Line Steamers, Ltd. V/s. Municipal Council of Cocanada (1917) 34 M.L.J. 145, in which I reviewed all the authorities. That judgment was confirmed on appeal and 1 do not propose to go over the same ground again.

(2.) The only question I have to consider is whether Section 92 of the new Madras District Municipalities Act of 1920 has altered the law as it stood at the date of the Clan Line case. In my opinion it has not, though I have no doubt that it was intended to do so. Two parts of the section are called in aid by the Municipality. The first is the body of the section itself which uses the phrase "transacting business" instead of the words of the old Act "exercising...any one...of the trades or callings specified in the schedule." It is quite obvious that if "transacting business" is not to be controlled in some way, it would render liable to the tax any company situate in Madras who made an isolated purchase for the purpose of re-sale or shipment abroad in any one of the Municipalities in the Presidency. No one can suppose that any such construction could reasonably be put upon the words. Stress is also laid upon the explanation to Section 92 which says: Whenever a company employs a servant or agent to represent it for the purpose of transacting. Business in a municipality, such company shall be deemed to transact business within the Municipality and such servant or agent shall be liable for the tax in respect of the company's business whether or not he has power to make binding contracts on behalf of the company.

(3.) In my view that carries the matter no further. I feel myself constrained to construe "transacting business" as meaning no more than the! phrase "carrying on business" which has been denned by a series of decisions of the highest Courts in England and settled for this Court by the decision in Clan Line Steamers, Ltd. V/s. Municipal Council of Cocanada (1917) 34 M.L.J. 145. The English decisions I have reviewed in my judgment in the last named case. It may be quite true that if the Company does carry on business in the Municipality, the fact that it does so by an agent who has no power to make binding contracts is no longer one of the tests to be applied. The question still remains, "does the Company either itself or by its agent transact, i.e., carry on business in the accepted legal meaning of the term within the Municipality ?" In my opinion it would be no more reasonable so to hold than to hold that a Company who sends a commercial traveller all over India to make purchases for them can be said to carry on business in all the various places at which he calls to fulfil the purpose of his employment.