A.K. JAYASANKARAN NAMBIAR, J.

1. As the issue involved in all these writ petitions is the same, they are taken up together for consideration and disposed by this common judgment.

2. The issue involved in all these writ petitions is the liability to the charge of luxury tax, under the Kerala Tax on Luxuries Act, 1976, (hereinafter referred to as the Luxury Tax Act, for short), of amounts collected by the assessee, a resort hotel, by way of entry ticket charges and video/camera permit charges, while permitting customers, who are not residents at the hotel, to access the park and beach that is maintained by the hotel. The assessment years under consideration are assessment years 2001-2002 to 2010-2011. The luxury tax assessment of the assessee for the year 2001-2002 was initially completed, without taking into account the aforementioned charges that were collected by the assessee, for the purposes of the levy. The assessment was completed by an order dated 06.10.2005. Thereafter, by a notice dated 06.02.2008, the Commissioner of Commercial Taxes sought to suo motu revise the assessment order dated 06.10.2005 by invoking powers under Section 8 of the Luxury Tax Act. While the assessee objected to the steps taken by the Commissioner of Commercial Taxes for suo motu revision, inter alia, on the ground that the said proceedings were initiated beyond the period of limitation, the said objections were overruled and by an order dated 23.07.2009, the Commissioner directed the Assessing Officer to pass fresh orders of assessment after taking into consideration the charges received by the assesee towards entry ticket charges and video/camera permit charges. The impugned order of the Commissioner is produced as Ext.P4 in W.P. (C) No. 5723 of 2010 and is impugned therein by the petitioner assessee. In the said writ petition, Ext.P7 assessment order and Ext.P8 penalty order passed by the assessing authority, pursuant to Ext.P4 order of the Commissioner, are also impugned.

3. For the assessment years 2002-2003 to 2004-2005, the luxury tax assessments pertaining to the assessee were completed without taking into account the charges collected by the assessee towards entry ticket charges and video/camera permit charges. It is seen that the said charges were not included by the assessee while filing its returns for the purposes of the Luxury Tax Act. The assessee contends however that the details regarding the charges collected had been made available to the Assessing Officer at the time of assessment. The assessments that were completed for the said years were subsequently reopened in terms of Section 6(5) of the Luxury Tax Act and revised orders were passed against the assessee in respect of the said years. Taking into account the revised orders passed for the aforesaid years, while completing the assessments pertaining to the assessee for the years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007, the Assessing Officer included the aforementioned charges while completing the assessments for those years. Thus the assessee was served with assessment orders for the period from 2002-2003 to 2006-2007 (five assessment years) which completed the assessments on it by including the entry ticket charges and video/camera permit charges for the purposes of luxury tax assessment. The assessee, thereafter, preferred an appeal against the assessment orders for the aforementioned years and the First Appellate Authority partly allowed the appeal by holding that, while the disputed charges collected by the assesee would not strictly fall within the purview of charges for luxury provided in the hotel, 50% of the said charges would, nevertheless, have to be included in the charges on which tax had to be levied in terms of the Act. Both the assessee and the Department preferred appeals against the orders of the First Appellate Authority before the Appellate Tribunal. The Appellate Tribunal considered all the appeals against the orders of assessment, as well as the orders of pena