Judgment

KAPADIA, J.—

1.Leave granted.

2.The short point involved in this batch of civil appeals is whether the High Court was right in holding that Section 3(1)(b) which defines “annual value” and Section 3(8aa) which defines “market value” in the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 (“the said Act”) as substituted by Punjab Amending Act 11 of 1994 suffers from the vice of discrimination and, therefore, they are unconstitutional. We have before us a batch of civil appeals. For the sake of convenience, we reproduce hereinbelow the facts in the case of Civil Appeal No. 684/03 in the case of Municipal Committee, Patiala v. Model Town Residents Asson. & Ors..

3.At the outset, we may state that under Section 71(1) of the said Act the State Government has given exemption to the self occupied residential houses from the payment of house tax. Therefore, the grievance is confined to the payment of house tax by self occupied commercial premises.

4.Before examining the grounds of challenge, we quote hereinbelow the unamended Section 3(1) of the said Act :

“3.Definition. — In this act, unless there is something repugnant in the subject or context-

(1)‘annual value’ means-

(a)in the case of land, the gross a