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TMI Blog1969 (4) TMI 4X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the registration of the firm. Four ladies of the age group of over 55 years constituted themselves partners to carry on business under the name and style of " S.S.A. Gangamirthammal and Company " and the business was to be in the purchase and sale of arecanuts, groceries, cycles and spare parts, chicory, etc. Soon thereafter, they constituted one A. Rajendran and S. Chandrahasan, one of whom was the son of one of the partners, as the duly constituted agents to carry on the business of the partnership. This was on February 28, 1958. The Income-tax Officer examined all the above four partners on oath on March 18, 1962, and came to the conclusion that the oral testimony of the partners disclosed that it was not a genuine partnership. On appeal ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... g to him, it is outside the pale of the present enquiry. The test of a question ought not in certain cases to be considered superficially, as it might lead to miscarriage of justice. Rightly, Mr. Balasubrahmanyan concedes that a question of law is involved in this reference. If that much is not in dispute, inaptitude in the drafting of a question, in the instant reference, ought not to buttress reality, to project and sustain form. The question before us is wide enough to cover an appraisal of the aspect whether the conclusions of the Tribunal are reasonable, supportable and based on relevant considerations. We fail to see that the question is so cryptic as to formidably prevent us to enquire whether the Tribunal's order as a whole and cons ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... is partnership to find willy nilly some ground to reject the application. As an instance, we can refer to some of the questions which the Income-tax Officer asked the partners examined by him : " Did you pay your employees any bonus ? Did you pay Deepawali bonus ? What are the salaries of your employees ? Who is paid the highest salary? and such other similar questions. " On an overall impassionate scrutiny of the evidence recorded by the Income-tax Officer, one is bound to come to the conclusion, as the Appellate Assistant Commissioner did, that there is nothing suspicious about the document which was drawn up on the requisite stamp paper and which was acted upon by the partners by obtaining a registration of the same from the Regist ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... is incorrect. In our view, it is impossible to draw any inference from the mere fact of such interception in the course of the examination of a co-partner and particularly for the purpose of correcting the witness in a material particular. As already stated, we have read the evidence in full and we are not impressed with the conclusion arrived at either by the Income-tax Officer or the Tribunal that the testimony can lead and leads only to one conclusion that the document is non-genuine and the enterprise is a myth. Such cannot be a conclusion which a reasonable and prudent person can draw in the circumstances of this case and in our view there is no evidence to support such a conclusion. We do not find any basis at all for the Appellate Tr ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... he instrument of partnership is a departure from the well-known principle that in a partnership all act for each and each for all. No doubt, as Rankin C.J. said in Bisseswarlal Brijlal v. Commissioner of Income-tax, an instrument of partnership is not a magical talisman to protect its executants. The Supreme Court, in fact, has recognised, in Commissioner of Income-tax v. Abdul Rahim and Company, that a partner can serve a partnership in a representative capacity and share the profits with outsiders. Such being the march of law, we are firmly of the view that the Tribunal refused registration of the firm on irrelevant material and ignoring the concrete details available on record. As in this case it is not disputed that a question of la ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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