Validity of assessment made without following specified principles.

The plaintiff is the appellant. He filed O.S.No.101 of 1978 for declaration that the property tax assessment, by the defendant/municipality on him, dated 212. 1977, with reference to the suit property is illegal and for consequential injunction. The said suit was decreed in his favour, but on appeal by the Municipality the decree was reversed and the suit was dismissed holding that the enhanced assessment of property tax made by the said Municipality on 212. 1977 was not illegal. The appellate Court also held that the suit itself was not maintainable in view of Sec.354 of the Tamil Nadu District Municipalities Act, 1920. Aggrieved by the said judgment and decree, the second appeal has been filed by the plaintiff.

2. The main point argued by the learned counsel for the appellant is that the assessment made on 27.121977, enhancing the property tax from Rs. 633-44 to Rs.2,063-04 was not in accordance with Sec.82(2) of the abovesaid Act, and the decision in The Guntur Muncipal Council v. The Guntur Town Rate Payers’ Association, (1971)2 M.L.J. (S.C.) 7.

3. Sec.82 provides for the method of assessment of property for levying property tax. Sec.82(2) says as under:

“The annual value of lands and buildings shall be deemed to be the gross annual rent at which they may reasonably be expected to let from month to month or from year to year (less a deduction in the case of buildings, of ten per cent, of that portion of such annual rent which is attributable to the buildings alone, apart from their sites and adjacent lands occupied as an appurtenance thereto)”

Interpreting the said Sec.82(2), the Supreme Court in the abovesaid decision held as under:

“Regarding the said” annual value “ the test essentially is what rent the premises can lawfully fetch if let out to a hypothetical tenant. The Municipality is not free to assess any arbitrary value and has to look to and is bound by the fair or standard rent which would be payable for a particular premises under the Rent Action force during the year of assessment. ....It may be that where the Controller (Rent Controller) has not fixed the fair rent, Municipal authorities will have to arrive at their own figure of fair rent but that can be done without any difficulty by keeping in view the principles laid down in the Sec.4 of the Act for determination of fair rent (Emphasis supplied)”.

.4. Further in Devan Dault Raj Kapoor v. New Delhi Municipality, A.I.R. 1980 S.C. 541, the same Tamil Nadu District Municipalities Act, 1920 was reiterated. Thus, it is true that the standard rent of the building not having been fixed by the Controller the assessing authority would have to arrive at its own figure of standard rent by applying the principles laid down in the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1959 for determination of standard rent, but that is a task which the assessing authority will have to perform as a part of the process of assessment and in the The Guntur Muncipal Council v. The Guntur Town Rate Payers’ Association, (1971)2 M.L.J. (S.C.) 7, this Court has said that it is not a task foreign to the function of assessment and has to be carried out by the assessing authority. When the assessing authority arrives at its own figure of standard rent by applying the principles laid down in the Act, it does not, in any way, usurp the function of the Controller, because it does not fix the standard rent which would be binding on the landlord and the tenant, which can be done only by the Controller under the Act, but it merely arrives at its own estimate of standard rent for the purpose of determining the annual value of the building, (emphasis supplied).

5. But in the present case, though the lower appellate Court observed that “the municipality has more or less followed the principles applicable in fixing the fair rent under Tamil Nadu Buildings Lease and Rent Control Act, 1960”, it has to be seen whether actually the respondent-municipality has followed the said principles. Sec.4 of Tamil Nadu B