Unmindful litigation by Government Departments:
The propensity of Government Departments and public authorities to keep litigating through different tiers of judicial scrutiny is one of the reasons for docket explosion. The Income Tax Department of the Government of India is one of the major litigants. There are two departmental scrutinies at the level of the Assessing Officer and the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) and thereafter an independent judicial scrutiny at the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (hereinafter referred to as the ‘ITAT’) level followed by the legal issue which can be inquired into by the High Courts. The last tier is, of course, the jurisdiction under Article 136 of the Constitution of India before the Supreme Court.
Mindful of the phenomenon of the docket explosion and the rising litigation in the country, the Union of India in order to ensure the conduct of responsible litigation framed what is today known as the National Litigation Policy, to bring down the pendency of cases and get meaningful issues decided from the judicial forums rather than multiple tiers of scrutiny just for the sake of it. The Government, being a litigant in well over 50 per cent of the cases, has to take a lead in not being a compulsive litigant.
Appeals under National Litigation Policy:
In respect of filing of appeals in revenue matters it is stated in the National Litigation Policy as under:
“(G) Appeals in revenue matters will not be filed:
(a) if the stakes are not high and are less than that amount to be fixed by the Revenue authorities:
(b) if the matter is covered by a series of judgments of the Tribunal or of the High Court which have held the field and which have not been challenged in the Supreme Court:
(c) where the assessee has acted in accordance with long standing industry practice:
(d) merely because of change of opinion on the part of the jurisdictional officers.
Review of pending cases:
(A) All pending cases involving the Government will be reviewed. This due diligence process shall involve drawing upon statistics of all pending matters which shall be provided for by all Government departments (including public sector undertakings). The Office of the Attorney General and the Solicitor General shall also be responsible for reviewing all pending cases and filtering frivolous and vexatious matters from the meritorious ones.
(B) Cases will be grouped and categorized. The practice of grouping should be introduced whereby cases should be assigned a particular number of identity according to the subject and statute involved. In fact, further sub-grouping will also be attempted. To facilitate this process, standard forms must be devised which lawyers have to fill up at the time of filing of cases. Panels will be set up to implement categorization, review such cases to identify cases which can be withdrawn. These include cases which are covered by decisions of courts and cases which are found without merit withdrawn. This must be done in a time bound fashion.
The circular of Income Tax Department:
In the present proceedings, we are concerned with the implementation of Instruction No.3 of 2011 dated 9.2.2011, providing for appeals not to be filed before the High Court(s) where the tax impact was less than Rs.10 lakh. It also contains certain other conditions which will be reverted to later, but suffice to say that this Instruction was in supersession of the earlier Instruction No.1979 of 2000 dated 27.3.2000 where the limit of the tax effect was Rs.4 lakh. The Instruction/Circular in question is stated to have a prospective effect as per the Revenue and, thus, cases which were pending in the High Court(s) and had been filed prior to the Instruction in question (Instruction No.3) but had tax effect of less than Rs.10 lakh were, thus, required to be determined on their merits and not be dismissed by applying the circular/instruction.
Divergence of legal opinion on this aspect amongst the High Courts and different benches of Supreme Court.
Retrospective application of circular if permissible:
The view of the Supreme Court:
The view adopted by the Delhi High Court making the Circular applicable to pending matters came up before a three Judge Bench of this Court in SLP(C) No.CC 13694/2011 titled CIT Central-III v. Surya Herbal Ltd. when the following order was passed on 29.8.2011:
“Delay condoned.
Liberty is given to the Department to move the High Court pointing out that the Circular dated 9th February, 2011, should not be applied ipso facto, particularly, when the matter has a cascading effect. There are cases under the Income Tax Act, 1961, in which a common principle may be involved in subsequent group of matters or large number of matters. In our view, in such cases if attention of the High Court is drawn, the High Court will not apply the circular ipso facto. For that purpose, liberty is granted to the Department to move the High Court in two weeks.
The Special Leave Petition is, accordingly, disposed of.”
The aforesaid order, in our view, actually should have laid the controversy to rest.
The retrospective applicability of the Circular dated 9.2.2011 was not interfered with, but with two caveats – (i) Circular should not be applied by the High Courts ipso facto when the matter had a cascading effect; (ii) where common principles may be involved in subsequent group of matters or a large number of matters. It was opined that in such cases, the attention of the High Court would be drawn and the Department was even given liberty to move the High Court in two weeks.
In our view this order holds the field and should continue to hold the field.
Mystery of Law and Justice 