Lands and buildings used for charitable purposes are not exigible to property tax, and the availability of an alternative remedy of appeal does not oust the High Court's jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution.

( 1 ) BY this Judgment I shall dispose of two writ petitions filed by Ramditti Jiwandaram Narang Public Charitable Trust (Narang Trust) in respect of Ratification Order dated 16. 1. 2002, The Joint Assessor and Collector had determined the Rateable Value (RV) as Rs. 2,21,300/- with effect from 1. 4. 1997 NR and Rs. 2,29,600/- with effect from 1. 4. 1998 NR. Thereafter, in writ petition No. 2577/2002 the Officer held that - "the Assessee has also requested for exemption from levy of property tax U/s 115 of the DMC Act. Under this order only tax liability has been fixed. The assessee can apply afresh for exemption of the said tax by filing a separate application before the Jt. Assessor and Collector, C-XII who is presently dealing with the exemption case, along with the supporting documents as per the requirement of Section 115 of DMC Act". In the subsequent writ petition bearing No. 5289 of 2003 the Officer came to the conclusion that "in the light of the directions of the High Court in the case of National Institute of Immunology, as reproduced above, the Trust does not fulfill the requirement of Voluntary Donations and, as such, is not liable for grant of exemption of general tax under Section 115 (4) of the DMC Act. Their request is rejected". The legal correctness of these Orders will be determined in this Judgment.

( 2 ) IT cannot be gainsaid that every fiscal or taxing statute perforce contains a charging section . The two municipal Acts applicable to the National Capital Territory of Delhi are no exception. The charging sections so far as property taxes are concerned are to be found in Section 115 of the DMC Act, 1957 and Section 62 of the NDMC Act, 1994, both of which are identical. The statutes firstly promulgate in these sections that all lands and buildings shall be liable to payment of property tax and thereafter immediately carve out three exceptions to this generality. In other words, lands and buildings falling within the exception are not liable for payment of tax; this is not the same as saying that they can be exempted since there is no liability in the first place. It appears to me that there is a widely prevalent misnomer that exemption has to be applied for and thereupon granted or declined by the appropriate authority. We do not come across an assessment of property tax in respect of agricultural lands and its subsequent waiver or `exemption . The misnomer has been conceived, born and nurtured primarily for the reason that it is the assessee who has to bring it to the notice of the Municipality that its land and/or buildings are being used for charitable purposes and consequently are not liable, in contradistinction to being exempt from the payment of property tax. Perhaps this is also because of the use of the word `exempt in Sections 62 (3) and 115 (6) of the said Acts. I cannot locate any statutory sanction for the commonplace practice of determining a rateable value under these two Acts, and thereafter adjudicating upon whether the assessee is entitled to to be exempted from the payment of property tax. In my opinion, lands and buildings used for charitable purposes as envisaged in the Acts, are not exigible to property tax at all. It has often times been found that the RV is determined, demands for taxes raised, whilst the decision on the prayer for the so called exemption is intentionally procrastinated upon by the Authorities. In Jain Sabha Lodhi Colony v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, 100 (2002) Delhi Law Times 227, a Learned Single Judge of this Court after quashing the impugned Property Tax demand had directed the Respondents to first decide on the claim of the Temple for `charitable` user after considering the applicability of Section 125 of the DMC Act, and thereafter to reassess the RV of the property. Let us consider the example of property which is found to be impervious to exigibility of property tax for the assessment year 2000-2001. As the statute presently exis