These Writ petitions coming on for dictating orders, this day, the Court made the following:

ORDER

1. The petitioners have raised the challenge to the reassessment orders passed by the Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes under Section 39(1) of the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act (for short ‘VAT Act’) and /or 12A of the Karnataka Sales Tax Act, 1957 (for short ‘KST Act”) holding that the Artificially Created Light Energy (for short “ACLE’) is taxable at the rate of 12.5%.

2. Sri. K.G.Raghavan, the learned Senior Counsel appearing for Sri. K.J. Kamath, the Special Government Advocate appearing for the respondents has raised the threshold bar to the maintainability of these writ petitions. He submits that these petitions are to be rejected relegating the petitioners to the statutory appeal remedy provided by Section 62 of the VAT Act and/or by Section 20 of the KST Act.

3. Sri. N. Venkataraman, the learned Senior Counsel appearing for M/s. Harish and Company for the petitioners (M/S. Bharathi Airtel Limited) in W.P. Nos.35223-34/2010 and other connected petitions has strenuously argued how and why these petitions are required to be considered and disposed of on merits not