Section 46 of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973, is not unconstitutional and does not suffer from the vices of excessive delegation of legislative power and uncontrolled and unguided power in the matter of imposition of penalty.

D.S.Tewatia, J.

1. The petitioner has impugned the order of the Assessing Authority, annexure P-l dated 10th March, 1975, in this writ petition.

2. Since the counsel for the petitioner has not pressed his attack against the impugned order on merits, it is not necessary to notice the facts in any great detail. Suffice it to say that for the assessment year 1972-73 and for the accounting period starting from 7th June, 1973, to 31st March, 1974, three quarterly returns were required to be filed, first return on 30th October, 1973, for the period from 7th June, 1973, to 30th September, 1973, second return on 31st January, 1974, for the period from 1st October, 1973 to 31st December, 1973, and the third and the last one on 30th April, 1974, for the period from 1st January, 1974, to 31st March, 1974. The petitioner, however, filed all the three returns together on 30th December, 1974. He had also not deposited the sales tax for the given period. The Assessing Authority acting under Section 46 of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the Act), imposed penalty at the rate of Rs. 8 per day and the final amount that became payable along with the interest and penalty of Rs. 250 under Section 47 came to Rs. 9,567.

3. Mr. Narula confined himself to the challenging of the vires of Section 46 of the Act where the Assessing Authority had imposed penalty of a given sum upon the petitioner for not filing the returns in time and also for not depositing the tax along with the returns. Mr. Narula has canvassed that Section 46 suffers from the vice of excessive delegation of the legislative power and from the vice of vesting in the authority mentioned in Section 46 uncontrolled and unguided power in the matter of imposition of penalty.

4. The aforesaid contention stands settled against the petitioner in this jurisdiction by a Division Bench judgment of this Court reported in Surja Ram Cotton Ginning and Pressing Factory v. State of Haryana [1979] 44 STC 21 and the following observations of Sandhawalia, C. J., may be noticed with advantage :

4. A combined reading of the provisions of Sections 25 and 46 of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act would broadly indicate the scheme laid out in the statute with regard to the submission of sales tax returns and the payment of tax thereunder. The manner and the period of time at which it is to be done is to be prescribed by the Rules made under the Act by virtue of Section 2(i). It is not in dispute that the Haryana General Sales Tax Rules, 1975, have been duly framed under the Act. The registered dealers are then enjoined by Sub-section (3) of Section 25 to deposit the tax due in the prescribed manner in the Government treasury or the Reserve Bank of India or the State Bank of India and obtain a receipt therefor from such treasury or bank. A reference to Section 25(2) would then show that every registered dealer is bound to furnish the sales tax returns by such dates and to such authority as may be prescribed and along therewith he must attach the receipt for the amount of tax deposited. No detailed reference is necessary to Sub-section (4) of Section 25, which pertains to the filing of the revised returns which may become necessary on the discovery of any omission or error in an earlier return. The material provision herein then is Sub-section (5), which penalises the failure to pay the tax as required by the further condition that such default would involve the payment of simple interest therefor at the rates specified. As is plain, Section 46 then separately provides the penalties for a failure to furnish the prescribed tax returns.

5. In the context of the aforesaid scheme of the submission of returns and the payment of tax, the core of the argument of Mr. Dogra, whilst challenging the constitutionality of Section 46, is that the legislature has vested an unguided discretion in the Commissioner or his delegate to impose any penalty ranging from Rs. 5 to Rs. 10 for every