Patna High Court
Rai Bahadur H. P. Bannerji vs Commissioner Of Income-Tax, Bihar And ... on 2 March, 1951
Equivalent citations: [1951]19ITR596(PATNA), AIR 1951 PATNA 565, ILR 30 PAT 447
JUDGMENT
RAMASWAMI, J. - This reference is made by the Income-tax Appel alate Tribunal under Section 66(1) of the Indian Income-tax Act of 1922. The material facts are not controverted. The assessee carries on several business activities. He had purchased a piece of land measuring about 13 bighas for the alleged business of setting up a market and making profit. The plot was requisitioned by the military authorities under the Defence of India Rules. There was an agreement between the assessee and the military authorities that a sum of Rs. 1,100 per month will be paid to the assessee as compensation for the use of the land. It should be added that the military authorities used the land as a store-yard. For the year 1946-47 the assessee received a total sum of Rs. 13,200 as compensation. After making statutory deductions, the Income-tax Officer held that the net sum of Rs. 9,699 received by the assessee from the military authorities was liable to be taxed. The assessee preferred an appeal to the Appellate Assistant Commissioner and argued that the amount was not liable to be taxed since it was merely compensation from the military authorities for preventing the assessee from making use of his capital asset. This argument was accepted by the Appellate Assistant Commissioner. An appeal was preferred by the Income-tax Officer to the Appellate Tribunal who reversed the decision of the Appellate Assistant Comissioner and held that the amount was in substance profit derived from the land and so liable to be taxed.
At the instance of the assessee the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal has referred the following question for being determined by the High Court, viz., "Whether in view of the facts and the circumstances of the case, the sum of Rs. 9,699 received by the assessee from the military authorities is taxable ?"
On behalf of the assessee Mr. S. K. Majumdar stressed the argument that upon the facts of this case it should be held that the amount of Rs. 9,699 was compensation made for sterilisation of capital asset and was therefore not liable to be taxed. In support of his contention the learned counsel referred to Glenboig Union Fireday Co., Ltd. v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue in which the appellant company carried on business as manufacturers of fireclay goods and as merchants of raw fireclay, and was lessee of certain fireclay fields over part of which ran the line of the Caledonian Railway. In 1908 the railway company, to whom the lands belonged, though not the minerals beneath, instituted an action to restrain the appellant company from working the fireclay under the railway, contending that the fireclay was not a mineral and consequently formed part of the railway companys property. While the action was pending the appellant company was interdicted from working under the railway. In 1911 the House of Lords decided against the railway company, which thereupon exercised its statutory powers to require part of the fireclay to be left unworked on payment of compensation. The amount of compensation was settled by arbitration and duly paid to the appellant company in 1913. The question debated before the House was whether the amount received for compensation in respect of the fireclay left unworked was profit earned in the course of the companys trade. Upon the facts of the case the House of Lords held that the amount received as compensation was not a profit earned in the course of the companys trade but was a capital receipt, being a payment made for the sterilisation of a capital asset. In the present case the facts are manifestly different and it is impossible to hold that on account of requisition made by the military authorities "the capital asset" of the assessee has been "sterilised", to borrow the language used in the decision of the House of Lords. Reference was also made by Mr. Majumdar to Commissioner of Income-tax, Bihar & Orissa v. Rani Prayag Kumari Debi, in which the assessee had in pursuance of a decree received a certain sum of money as damages for wrongful detention of her movable property and a Special Bench of the Patna High Court held that such receipt was not "income" within the meaning of the Income-tax Act, 1922, and was not therefore liable to assessment. In my opinion the principle of this case is not of much assistance to the assessee in the present case. Manohar Lall, J., who pronounced the opinion of the Special Bench pointed out that there was a distinction between a case where damages, pure and simple, have been awarded and a case where there is receipt of damages or compensation in the course of business or trade carried on by a trader. Upon the facts of that case the learned Judge held that the receipt of the decretal amount for damages by the assessee for wrongful detention of her movable property was not income within the meaning of the Income-tax Act and was therefore not liable to assessment. It is manifest that the facts are not in any way parallel to the facts of the present case. On the contrary it would seem that the amount of compensation received by the assessee in really a profit derived from the land and it was rightly held by the Appellate Tribunal that the assessee was liable to be taxed under the Act.
Upon these grounds I hold that in the circumstancesa of the case the sum of Rs. 9,699 received by the assessee from the military authorities is taxable. The assessee must pay the cost of this reference to the Commissioner of Income-tax. Hearing fee Rs. 250.
BHBC SARJOO PROSAD, J. - I agree. Reference answered accordingly.