TMI Blog1971 (7) TMI 140X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... .06. It is claimed that notices of demand were issued as against the defaulting assessee as and when the tax was reckoned for each of the assessment years. Apparently, the dealer, Mr. Chettiar, without disclosing that such was his liability under the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act, disposed of the above properties for consideration in favour of the petitioner. Soon thereafter, the revenue, taking advantage of section 24 of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act, gave a notice of demand on the petitioner and sought to distrain his properties mentioned above. On receipt of the said notice, the petitioner has come up to this court for the issue of a writ of certiorari to quash the intended proceedings of the respondent in the purported exercis ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the alternative, is that the petitioner should be deemed to be an "aggrieved person" because of the service of the challenged notice and that in those circumstances he has to be referred to an independent suit for getting appropriate reliefs and incidentally interdict the process already set in motion by the revenue. The word "defaulter" has not been defined in the Madras Revenue Recovery Act. But the provisions thereof are, by a fiction, deemed to apply in situations where an assessee under the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act is in default. Section 24 of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act deals with payment and recovery of tax. If default is made in paying according to the orders of assessment, the amount so reckoned shall become imm ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Tax Act the proceedings sought to be initiated under the challenged notice are ab initio illegal. I am unable to agree. Section 24 of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act, 1959, makes it clear that a charge is created over the property of a dealer for all the arrears of sales tax or dues payable under the said Act by such a dealer. As, by the creation of a statutory charge, the property is burdened until it is relieved of the same by a process known to law, the petitioner cannot escape by merely stating that he is not factually a "dealer" as is popularly understood and his property cannot in any manner be proceeded against notwithstanding the fact that the property is charged statutorily for the payment of the arrears of sales tax due by ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... r the petitioner, says that it is for the State to file a suit in a civil court and pursue the statutory charge. This would mean that his request is to ask the State to file a suit not to obtain redress but to further its rights. That is not the intention of the section. The section provides for giving redress to persons aggrieved by proceedings under the Act. The petitioner is undoubtedly aggrieved as he has come up to this court challenging the one taken and seeking for a rule under article 226 of the Constitution. It is he who should file a suit to get redress or the appropriate relief. What the relief he can obtain, it is not for this court to surmise or to predicate. The apprehension of the petitioner is that the revenue is likely to ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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