Case: Tata Engineering &amp; Locomotive Co. Ltd Vs. The Sales Tax Officer &amp; Regional Transportofficer, Poona An

The appellants are a company registered under the Companies Act, 1913 and have their factories at Pimpri and Chinchvad in the District of Pune (Maharashtra). The appellants employ as many as 7.000 workmen in those factories. In order to provide transport facilities to their employees to come to the factories from their respective villages the appellants provided transport which would pick up passengers from Pune or Khed or Vadgaon or Alandi or places enroute to TELCO Factory at Pi mpri or Chinchvad and back. For this journey a nominal charge of Rs. 10 per month was realised by the appellants from the employees. Similarly, for the transport facilities provided to the employees from Pimpri Railway Crossing and onwards to TELC O factory, they were charged at the rate of Rs. 5 per month. A charge of Rs. 2 per month was levied for the transport of employees from Chinchvad Village to TELCo factory at Pimpri and back.

Reasoning:
A combined reading, therefore, of rule 2(i) and section 2(7) of the Act clearly indicates that the tax would be leviable only if the passengers are carried on a public service vehicle. It is true that the term public service vehicle has not been defined either by the Act or by the Rules, but that however does not create any difficulty, because having regard to the Preamble of the Act we are of the opinion that the tax can be levied only on passengers who are carried by a stage carriage which is of the nature of a public service vehicle. The word public has got a well known connotation and means a carriage to which any member of the public can have free access on payment of the usual charges. It cannot by any process of reasoning or stretch of imagination be deemed to include employees of a private company who are given facilities not as members of the public but as holding a special status, namely, the employees of thattransport service in the present case which was registered as private service vehicle falls squarely within the ambit of the aforesaid definition Moreover, in the instant case, it is not disputed that the transport provided to the employees of the company was reserved for them only and no other member of the public even if he wanted to pay full charges could be carried on the said vehicle. In these circumstances, therefore, it cannot be said that the transport vehicle provided to the employees by the appellants could be a public service vehicle in any sense of theThe Commissioner appear s to have dismissed the appeals of the appellants as he felt bound by the judgment of the Bombay High Court which had held that the transport vehicle provided to the employees by the company would be a public service vehicle. In view of our finding that such a transport vehicle is not a public service vehicle within the meaning of the provisions of the Bombay Motor Vehicles Act, the view taken by the Bombay High Court is clearly erroneous and must be overruled.is manifest that if the appellants had not levied any charge at all for the transport facilities granted to the employees they would not be exigible to passengerour opinion, the contention of the learned counsel is well founded and must prevail.The Bombay Motor Vehicles (Taxation on Passengers) Act, 1958 hereinafter called the Act is a statute which authorises the levy of passenger tax. This Act has been amended several times right from the year 1960 to 1975. Before analysing the relevant provisions of the Act, it may be necessary to extract the Preamble to the Act which runsperusal of the Preamble clearly reveals that the dominant object of the Act was to impose tax on certain classes of public service vehicles. In other words, the Preamble indicates that vehicles which could not be termed as public service vehicles fell beyond the ambit of the taxing provisions of thesection 3 authorises the levy of tax on all passengers carriages by road in stage carriages. This section contains two essential ingredients: (1) that the transport concerned must carry passengers by road, and (2) that such passengers must be carried in stage carriages. that is to say, as defined in section 2(7) of the Act, passengers must be carried for hire or reward at separate fares paid by or for individual passengers, either for the whole journey or for stages of the journey.