11. At the most, the conduct of the assessee can cause some suspicion but suspicion has no place to be made a basis for assessment by the revenue. Reliance of the learned departmental representative on the case of Jose (supra) is misplaced because in that case their Lordships of the Kerala High Court while bringing that case under the mischief of Section 16(3) made the following observation :
1. In this application the petitioner prays for review of the judgment of this court in I.T.R. No. 84 of 1974. That reference application had been disposed of along with O.P, No. 5119 of 1974 ([1979] 117 ITR 894 (Ker)]. We had answered the question referred to us in the I.T.R. in the affirmative, that is, in favour of the department and against the assessee--reported as Jose T.Mooken v. CIT [1979] 117 ITR 894 (Ker).
4. Sri Ravindranatha Menon, the standing counsel for the revenue, submitted that the Appellate Tribunal being a creature of the statute, it can exercise only such powers as are conferred on it by the statute. In the absence of any specific provision in that behalf the Tribunal cannot review its own order as it becomes functus officio after rendering the ex parte order, whether on merits or not. He placed reliance on the decision of a Division Bench of this court in Jose T. Mooken v. CIT [1979] KLT 114; [1979] 117 ITR 921 (Ker) to which one of us (Bhaskaran J.) was a party. In para. 9, at p. 119 of KLT it was held as follows (see also 117 ITR at p. 929):
He also relied upon the judgment of the Kerala High Court in Jose T. Mooken v. CIT (No. 2) , in which a similar view was taken by the Kerala High Court. In the said decision, the Kerala High Court held that the reference jurisdiction of the High Court under the Income-tax Act was a special jurisdiction and was of an advisory or consultative nature and it was neither original, appellate nor revisional jurisdiction and, therefore, the provisions of Order 47, rule 1 were not attracted and, therefore, a review application as against an order made by the High Court in the reference jurisdiction was not maintainable.
13. However, learned standing counsel for the Department, drew our attention to a decision of the Kerala High Court in Jose v. CIT [1967] 64 ITR 29. According to the facts arising in that case, where a person makes a gift of a sum of money to his wife and the wife contributes the same towards the capita of a firm, a question arose whether the share of profits received by the wife can be included in the income of the husband under section 16(3). The Kerala High Court held that it would depend on whether the income derived from the partnership was entirely due to the investment of the gifted money or whether in the making of that income other elements were also in operation. According to the Kerala High Court, since no other element operated, it was held that the wife's share of profits arose wholly and exclusively from the sum which the assessee had given to his wife and her share of the profits could be included in the assessee's income.
5. The plea of the assessee which was accepted by the Appellate Tribunal was that the purchaser, Messrs. Ram Bahadur Thakur (P.) Ltd., became entitled to receive "all refunds out of the monies paid to the tax authorities and ordered to be refunded at any time" and so the respon-dent-assessee, Messrs. Travancore Tea Estates Ltd., Cochin, could not have been assessed on the interest awarded to them under Section 214 of the Income-tax Act. The short question that falls for consideration is, whether the interest awarded to the respondent/assessee under Section 214 of the Income-tax Act shall be considered to be a refund specified in Clause 5(c) of annexure "A-5" agreement. A Bench of this court in Jose T. Mooken v. CIT [1979] 117 ITR 894, at pages 907 and 908, stated thus :