The Hindu : New Delhi News : Court upholds order enhancing tax on omni buses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 29, 2007
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Court upholds order enhancing tax on omni buses

J. Venkatesan

Writ petitions filed in High Court
“very vague and bereft of details”

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed as withdrawn a batch of petitions challenging a Madras High Court judgment upholding the hike in tax from Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 3,000 a seat per quarter imposed on omni bus operators in Tamil Nadu.

A Bench of Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice B. Sudershan Reddy dismissed the petitions holding there was no infirmity in the order enhancing the tax.

The High Court, in a separate set of writ petitions, had upheld enhancement of the tax from Rs.1,500 to Rs.2,000 from 1998 and Rs.2,000 to Rs. 3,000 from 2001. The Bench declined to interfere with the impugned judgment dated November 29, 2005 and confirmed the hike.

The Bench observed that the writ petitions filed in the High Court were very vague and bereft of details. No data had been furnished. However, the Bench gave liberty to the omni bus operators to file fresh writ petitions in the High Court, if so advised, with all particulars.

According to the Tamil Nadu Omni Bus Owners Association hundreds of petitions were filed in the High Court challenging the increase in tax. Despite the petitioners demonstrating the burden on the omni bus operators due to the hike in tax, the High Court dismissed all the petitions.

Heavy burden

The petitioners in their SLPs contended that the tax imposed a very heavy burden on the contract carriages as compared to other class of motor vehicles, more particularly stage carriages (private buses operating in a fixed route). Such a hike would result in the annihilation of business of many omni bus operators on account of the burden of taxation.

They contended that omni bus operators had been singled out for higher tax and the burden of tax had not been uniformly distributed between stage carriage and contract carriage operators.

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