Income Tax Appeal v. Satyanarayan Omprakash Agrawal

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAYNAGPUR BENCH, NAGPUR. INCOME TAX APPEAL NO. 73 OF 2013The Commissioner of Income Tax, Nagpur -vs- Satyanarayan Omprakash Agrawal AND INCOME TAX APPEAL NO. 79 OF 2013The Commissioner of Income Tax, Nagpur -vs- Ankit Kumar Agrawal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Office notes, Office Memoranda ofCoram, appearances, Court's ordersCourt's or Judge's Orders.or directions and Registrar's orders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shri Anand Parchure, counsel for the appellant. S/Shri C.J.Thakkar & N.S.Bhattad, counsel for the respondent. CORAM : SMT. VASANTI A. NAIK &A. S. CHANDURKAR, JJ. DATE : 11.10.2013. Since the issue involved in the appeals is identical, they are heard together and are decided by this common order. By these appeals, the appellant challenges the orders of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal partly allowing the appeals filed by the respondents-assessees and setting aside the order of the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) making the addition. According to the learned counsel for the appellant, the Tribunal erred in treating the surplus realized by the respondents-assessees by the sale of agricultural land as agricultural income instead of treating it as income from business, specially when the sale of agricultural land by the respondents-assessee was an adventure in the nature of trade. On hearing the learned counsel for the parties and on a perusal of the orders of the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) and the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, it appears that the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal was justified in partly allowing the appeals filed by the respondents-assessees and holding that the sale of agricultural land was not an adventure in the nature of trade and therefore could not be said to be income under the head of ‘income from business’. While recording the aforesaid finding, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal considered the material on record. The Appellate Tribunal found that the respondents-assessees had purchased several agricultural lands during the period from 1994 to 2009 and had sold only a couple of agricultural lands in the year 2006. The respondents-assessees were registered as agriculturists and the documents showing that several lands were cultivated by the assessees during the period from 1994 to 2006-07 were placed on record. The Tribunal found that the respondents-assessees had purchased as many as thirty lands and had sold only a couple of them in the year 2006. The land sold by the respondents-assessees was situated more than 8 kilometers away from the municipal limits of Nagpur Municipal Corporation and the income from the land was assessed as agricultural income for all the previous assessment years. Apart from the aforesaid facts, the Tribunal considered several other documents produced by the respondents-assessees to hold that it could not be inferred on the basis of KHUNTE the material on record that the assessees traded in agricultural lands. The findings recorded by the Tribunal are pure findings of facts which do not give rise to any substantial question of law. In the result, the appeals fail and are dismissed with no order as to costs. JUDGE JUDGE