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TMI Blog2006 (5) TMI 464X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 34 STC 460; [2003] 42 STA 72. Mr. Asit Chakraborty, learned Senior Advocate appearing for the petitioner, contests such objection and submits that in the facts and circumstances of the present case this Tribunal should hear the present case on merits and should not send the petitioner to another forum after almost two years of pendency of this case before this Tribunal. Before dealing with the said question of jurisdiction it is necessary to state the basic facts involved in this case. According to the petitioner it was sending M.S. scraps to Amingao, Guwahati in Assam on receipt of an order from one M/s. Shriram Steel Industry Pvt. Ltd. An invoice for supply of 34,460 kgs. of M.S. scraps, the challan for transporting the said goods a ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... action relates to the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956, the same comes out of the purview of the State Sales Tax Act and the Tribunal constituted under the West Bengal Taxation Tribunal Act, 1987 cannot assume jurisdiction in respect of such actions The said judgment of the Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court set aside the order dated July 24, 2002 passed by a single judge of the same High Court holding that the High Court had no jurisdiction and the case should have been moved before the Tribunal. Mr. Chakraborty, learned Advocate appearing for the petitioner has submitted that when this application was filed before this Tribunal, the judgment of the Division Bench, though delivered earlier, was not reported and published and the peti ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... . In the present case according to the petitioner itself the seized goods were being transported to Assam outside the State of West Bengal and such movement was in the course of an inter-State trade or commerce. The Central Sales Tax Act is not within the purview of this Tribunal. This Tribunal has no jurisdiction to entertain an application seeking to question any action or inaction to enforce the provisions of the Central Sales Tax Act. When a court or Tribunal lacks jurisdiction to deal with a certain class of matters, it cannot assume jurisdiction for any reason whatsoever. There is distinction between total absence of jurisdiction and refusal to exercise jurisdiction. When this Tribunal has no jurisdiction at all, it has no power ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... t the time of filing present application but when this judgment came to be known in 2003 itself, the petitioner could have easily withdrawn this application and moved the High Court avoiding unnecessary wastage of time and expenditure. It is not clear to us why the petitioner kept this application pending before this Tribunal even after the judgment was reported. Long before the decision in Sajjan Kumar Sharma [2004] 134 STC 460; [2003] 42 STA 72, the Calcutta High Court in Sitaram Sree Gopal v. Certificate Officer, 24-Parganas reported in [1977] 40 STC 124 (judgment delivered on February 20, 1976) clearly held (page 127): Article 269 of the Constitution deals with the taxes that are levied and collected by the Union but which are as ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... dues of the State. It still is a levy by the Central Government and the levy is made by the State Government on behalf of the Central Government. The fiction that is created for the purpose of assessment and levy by sub-section (2) is a fiction created for the purpose of collection and realisation but does not transform the levy to be a levy by the State Government nor does it make the amount due an amount due to the State Government. The character of the liability, in my opinion, remains as the liability to the Central Government . . . Thus there cannot be any doubt or dispute that when the goods are being sent from West Bengal to an outside State, tax payable is Central sales tax and not the State sales tax. As already stated Mr. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... rpose of enforcing the provisions of the Central Sales Tax Act but the petitioner's own case and the undisputed fact is that the goods were seized at the exit point from West Bengal and that only tax payable was Central sales tax. For the foregoing reasons we are unable to accede to the forceful argument made by Mr. Chakraborty. According to us, we have no jurisdiction to consider this application on merit and this application is not entertainable in this Tribunal. The petitioner is now at liberty to approach the Calcutta High Court, the appropriate forum for dealing with anything pertaining to the Central Sales Tax Act on the same cause of action. The application is thus disposed of. No order as to costs. B.K. MNJUMDAR (Tec ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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