I-T dept moves SC to reopen Vodafone case
The department wants the matter heard afresh by a larger seven-judge bench. It has pointed out that the January judgment, delivered by a three-judge bench headed by the then chief justice SH Kapadia, had erroneously interpreted a 1985 ruling by a five-judge bench in the McDowell’s case.
The I-T department has sought the reopening of the case while challenging a different Gujarat High Court order which had absolved the company from payment of any capital gains tax on the demerger of its passive infrastructure assets.
Additional documents filed by the department seeking a reconsideration by a larger SC bench has stated that the rulings in the Vodafone case and the Azadi Bachao case (2004) “require to be overruled, as they are in conflict with the decision of a Constitutional bench of five judges in McDowell case (1985)”.
The application has quoted justice Chinnappa Reddy’s observations in the McDowell’s case regarding the need to depart from the “Westminster” principle as emphatically as British courts have done. Quoting from the 1985 judgment, it has highlighted that the “proper way to construe a taxing statute, while considering a device to avoid tax, is not to ask whether the provisions should be construed literally or liberally, nor whether the transaction is not unreal and not
Be the first to comment.
