TMI Blog1951 (3) TMI 29X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... whether the assessee is entitled to claim the sums paid as municipal property tax under Section 9(1)(iv) of the Indian Income-tax Act and the sums paid as urban property tax under either Section 9(1)(iv) or Section 9(1)(v) of the Act? Now this Court has taken the view that these amounts are not permissible deductions under Section 9 of the Act(2). The Supreme Court took a different view and came to the conclusion that they were permissible deductions(3). Therefore, if nothing more had happened and if the judgment of the Supreme Court had stood, we would have been bound to answer this question in favour of the assessee. But the Union Government intervened and passed an Ordinance No. XXVIII of 1950 which has now taken the shape of an Act o ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... repeal by this Constitution of the enactments referred to in Article 395 but subject to the other provisions of this Constitution, all the law in force in the territory of India immediately before the commencement of this Constitution shall continue in force therein until altered or repealed or amended by a competent Legislature or other competent authority. Sir Jamshedji puts his argument in this way. He says that it is because of Article 372 that laws which were in force prior to the coming into force of the Constitution have been saved and the laws have been saved in the form and in the shape in which they were at the date when the Constitution came into force. Sir Jamshedji adds that the power of Parliament is restricted to altering ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... t subject under Article 245(1). Again, turning to Article 372(1), although the laws in force prior to the coming into force of the Constitution have been saved by Article 372(1), it must not be overlooked that the Legislature has been given the power to alter, repeal or amend any of these laws, and what the Indian Parliament has done by this Act is to amend a law which was in existence at the date of the coming into force of the Constitution and which was saved by Article 372(1). Article 372(1) does not lay down any limitation upon the power of the Parliament to amend a pre-existing law. Its power of amendment is wide and untrammelled, and in the exercise of that power if the Parliament has chosen to amend the Indian Income-tax Act and to d ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ided by the amended law and an exception should be made in the case of a particular individual, who successfully carried his appeal to the Supreme Court and got the Supreme Court to hear his appeal. It is true that on the face of the law a discrimination has been made in favour of a particular assessee, and what we have to find is whether there was any reasonable basis for making this discrimination. It is quite a reasonable view which Parliament could have taken and has taken that in the case of those assessees who prosecuted their appeals and got a judgment before the 7th October, 1950, there should be some relaxation as far as the income-tax law is concerned. They took the trouble to prefer the appeal, they took the trouble to prosecute ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... e actual rent received by the owner of the property, but a notional rent, and the notional rent is to be gathered from what a hypothetical tenant would pay for the property under assessment. Undoubtedly, if actual rent is received, that would be an important factor for the taxing authorities to consider, but that would not in every case be the proper annual value as contemplated by the Act. Take a case like this. An owner of a property may let out his property to a tenant and enter into an agreement with him that all charges which are normally and ordinarily paid by the landlord should be paid by the tenant. In consideration of this he may get much less rent than he would have got if he himself was liable to pay all these ordinary charges. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... municipal valuation should be the only determining factor, we would undoubtedly have interfered and we would have asked the Tribunal to state a question on which we would have laid down what the correct law was. But as far as this particular case is concerned, it is clear that the municipal valuation by itself has not been the only evidence which the Tribunal has considered. Not only that, but the Tribunal has not laid down that in every case the municipal valuation should be the only test that should be applied in order to determine what is the annual value of a property. As it happens, in this particular case on a consideration of all the factors the Tribunal has come to the conclusion that the proper annual value of the property is the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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