CHAKRAVARTTI, C. J.

( 1 ) THIS appeal involves a short and simple point, but it was sought to be presented as if it involved an intricate question of interpretation of statutes and also a profound question of constitutional law. In my opinion, whatever the true answer to the question may be, there is no room for either intricacy or profoundity.

( 2 ) THE facts are equally simple. The respondent is a private limited company, incorporated under the Indian Companies Act and having its registered office at 8, Clive Row, Calcutta. For the assessment years 1942-43, 1943-44 and 1944-45, assessments were made on it by three several orders, dated respectively 26-1-1944, 12-2-1944 and 15-2-1945. Those assessments were made under Section 23 (3), Income-tax Act, upon returns being furnished and the amounts of tax demanded were duly paid. Subsequently, on 28-3-1951, three separate notices were issued to the respondent, calling upon it to submit fresh returns for the three accounting years, relative to the said three assessment years, with a view to re-assessments of the income. Those notices were issued under SECTION 34, Income-tax Act, as amended by the Income-tax and Business Profits Tax (Amendment) Act, (48 of 1948) on the ground that the Income-tax Officer concerned had reason to believe that the income for each of the years had been under-assessed.

( 3 ) AFTER some correspondence, the respondent furnished returns in compliance with the notices on 13-8-1951, doing so under protest, and it returned, as we were informed from the Bar, the same income for each respective year as on the previous occasion. Thereafter, on 18-9-1951, the respondent moved this Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution of India for various reliefs, among them being appropriate writs on the first appellant, directing him to forbear from proceeding further on the basis of the. notices issued and to certify and return to this Court the relevant records in order that the proceedings might be quashed. Bose, J. , before whom the application was moved, issued a very comprehensive Rule and by an order made on 26-3-1952, he made the Rule absolute to the extent that he prohibited the appellants from proceeding with the assessment proceedings, pursuant to the notices issued on 28-3-1951. The second appellant, the Union of India, had been added as a party in the course of the proceedings on its own application.

( 4 ) IT appears that two points were urged before Bose J. It was contended that the proceedings were bad in law, inasmuch as the conditions precedent required to give jurisdiction to an Income-tax Officer to proceed under Section 34 were absent in the present case and, secondly, that the section, as amended in 1948, could not at all apply to assessments for the three years in question, as fhe amendment had no retrospective operation! The learned Judge overruled the first contention, but accepted the second. Thereafter the present appeal was preferred.

( 5 ) THE principal question to be decided in the appeal is thus whether the present Section 34, Income-tax Act, is retrospective in operation, but it will be convenient to dispose of first a contention faintly urged by the respondent against the learned Judge's conclusion on the first point. It was argued that he was wrong in holding that no writ of prohibition or certiorari could lie in the present case on the ground that the conditions precedent to the issue of notices under Section 34 did not exist.

( 6 ) THE point, to my mind an exceedingly thin one, arises in the following way. Sub-section (1) of Section 34, so far as is material, provides that if the Income-tax Officer "has reason to believe" that by reason of the omission or failure on the part of an assessee to disclose fully and truly all material facts necessary for the assessment for any year, the income, profits or gains of that year have been under-assessed, he may issue a notice containing all or any of the requirements which may be included in a no

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