"Court Must Interpret Statute In Just, Reasonable & Sensible Manner": Supreme Court
The Supreme Court in a significant judgement on Thursday has observed that the Court must interpret a statute in a manner which is just, reasonable and sensible.
"If the grammatical construction leads to some absurdity or some repugnancy or inconsistency with the legislative intent, as may be deduced by reading the provisions of the statute as a whole, the grammatical construction may be departed from to avoid anomaly, absurdity or inconsistency," the bench of Justices Indira Banerjee & Sanjiv Khanna held.
The petitioner through a Special Leave Petition had contended before court that a single transaction in the purchase of a motor vehicle does not bring that person under the definition of “casual trader” as per the Entry Tax Act, 1988. According to the Act, for a trader to be treated as a “casual trader”, plurality of transactions is a condition precedent. The petitioner has contended that since there was only one transaction in the present case, the trader cannot be treated as a “casual trader”. The petitioner has challenged the Appellate authority order of the Rajasthan High Court, where the court has held that the assessee as a “casual trader”.
The division bench thus held that,
"The Legislature could not, possibly, have intended that a person making 2 or 3 transactions should be treated as a "Casual Trader", but a person making only one transaction should be treated at par with regular traders.
The bench has referred to the Supreme Court judgement in the case of Tirath Singh v. Bachittar Singh. AIR 1955 SC 830, where Venkatarama Aiyar, J. has held that where the language of a statute, in its ordinary meaning and grammatical construction, leads to a manifest contradiction of the apparent purpose of the enactment, or to some inconvenience or absurdity, hardship or injustice, presumably not intended, a construction may be put upon it which modifies the meaning of the words, and even the structure of the sentence. On the basis of above-mentioned observation, the bench has disposed the Special Leave Petition and upheld the judgement by the Rajasthan High Court.
Case Title : Commercial Taxes Officer, Circle-B, Bharatpur Vs. M/s Bhagat Singh