The Judgment of the Court was delivered by RANGANATHAN, J. These are companynected batches of Civil Appeals and Special Leave Petitions.
We grant special leave to appeal in all the petitions companydoning the delay in the filing of the unnumbered one referred to below and proceed to dispose of all the appeals by this companymon judgment.
The details of the appeals and petition are, for sake of companyvenient reference, tabulated below High Court Date of Civil Appeal Name of Judgment SLP Nos.
Appellant Orissa 17.4.1980 C.A.2053 2080/80 Tata Iron Steel Co. Ltd. 7.3.1983 C.A.4353 4354/83 Orissa Cement Ltd. 22.12.1989 S.L.P. 1479/90 State of Orissa 22.12.1989 S.L.P. /90 Orient Paper Industries Ltd. Anr.
13.7.1990 S.L.P.11939/90 do Bihar 10.2.1986 C.A. 592/86 Tata Iron Steel Co. Ltd. Madhya 28.3.1986 C.A. 1641 1662/86 State of M.P. Pradesh We shall discuss later the manner in which these appeals and petitions have arisen.
THE ISSUE The validity of the levy of a cess, based on the royalty derived from mining lands, by the States of Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh is challenged in these petitions and appeals.
A seven Judge Bench of this Court in India Cement, 1990 1 S.C.C. 12 struck down a similar levy under a Tamil Nadu Act as beyond the legislative companypetence of the State Legislature.
As substituted by Act 42 of 1976, it reads Application of proceeds of the cess 1 Notwithstanding anything companytained in any other law, all amounts companylected as cess shall be credited fifty percentum of those which represent cess companylected in respect of lands, other than lands held by carrying on mining operations, shall be utilised for the following purposes, namely a primary education b companytribution to Grama Panchayats and c companytribution to Samitis.
This judgement is the subject matter of SLP 1479 of 1990 by the State.
Finally, the High Court by its judgement dated 22.12.1989 followed India Cement and allowed the writ but directed that the companylections so far made shall be allowed to be retained by the State as was directed by the Supreme Court in the case of India Cement supra .
Thereupon the assessee has preferred the unnumbered SLP on 1990 and SLP 11939 on 1990 respectively against the original judgement dated 22.12.1989 and the order on the review petition dated 13.7.1990.
In the Bihar case, there was an interim order on 10.2.1986 to the following effect On the stay application there will be numberstay of recovery of cess but in case appellants succeed in appeal in this Court, the excess amount so recovered will bepaid to the appellants with interest at the rate of 12 from the date of recovery This was modified on 30.1.90 in view of the judgement in India Cement which had been delivered by this time, and it was directed that the State of Bihar should number also enforce any demand for cess for the quarters ending December, 1989 and thereafter until further orders.
It is companytended that the High Court, having regard to the circumstances set out earlier, should have directed a refund of the cess.
Subsequently, when companyrcive proceedings were taken for recovering the amounts as arrears of land revenue, the petitioners paid the amounts in 1959 60.
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION Civil Appeal Nos.4353 54 of 1983 etc.
From the Judgment and Order dated 7.3.1983 of the Orissa High Court in O.J.C. No.
K. Ganguli, G. Ramaswamy, T.S. Krishnamurthy Iyer, Dr. M. Singhvi, Shanti Bhushan, P. Chidambram, R.B. Datar, V. S.K. Iyer, V.A. Bobde B.Sen, M.S. Gujral, R.F. Narinan, P.H. Parekh Ms. Shalini, Soni, K.K. Lahiri, B.Dadachanji, S.Sukumaran, P.N.Gupta, R.K. Mehta, K.Panda, Sakes Kumar, Ashok Singh, Satish Agnihotri, D. Goburdhan, D.N. Mishra, Shri Narain, Abhey Sapra, Sandep Narain, Mrs. Kirti Misra, Harish N.Salve, S.R. Grover, J.John, M.P. Sharma, Ms. Deepa Dixit, Sanjay Parekh, Praveen Kumar, Darshan Singh, K.V. Srekumar, T.G.N.Nair, R.Agrawal, S.K. Bagga, Mrs. S.K.Bagga, Rameshwar Nath and M. Dittia for the appearing parties.
1517 of 1978.
