Writ petitions can be entertained despite alternate remedies if it involves clear legal principles or significant unjust outcomes, as established in Bhima Jewellery.

JUDGMENT

1. Petitioner is a dealer in gold ornaments and jewellery registered under the Kerala Value Added Tax Act, 2003 (for short, ‘KVAT Act’) and CST. Petitioner had been opting for compounded tax during the KGST regime. It is the case of the petitioner that the Sales Tax Authorities had been wrongly including the AST under Section 5D of the Kerala General Sales Tax Act, 1963 (for short, ‘KGST Act’), for computing compounded tax payable under Section 7 of the KGST Act. The Petitioner had been opting for payment of tax at compounded rates under Section 8 (f) of the KVAT Act since its introduction in the year 2006-07. Petitioner is challenging Ext.P24 Assessment Order passed by the Respondent No.4 under (f) of the KVAT Act with respect to the Assessment Year 2013-14. The contention of the petitioner is that the Respondent No.4 has included the AST component under Section 5D of the KGST period in the base year while arriving at the compounded tax liability on the inception of KVAT compounding under (f) for the assessment year 2006-07 and the cascading effect of the AST component continued in the assessment of the succeeding years and in the impugned Assessment Order also there is cascading effect of AST and the same is in violation of the decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court inBhima Jewellery v. Assistant Commissioner (Assessment), Kerala [(2014) 16 SCC 402]. Hence, the Respondent No.4 is to be directed to re-do the assessment for the Assessment year 2014-15, excluding the AST component, after setting aside Ext.P24 Assessment Order.

2. The Respondent No.2 filed Counter Affidavit opposing the prayers in the Writ Petition. It is admitted in the Counter Affidavit that the Hon’ble Supreme Court allowed the appeal filed by Bhima Jewellery against the addition of AST to the tax for computation for the compounded tax liability. Bhima Jewellery (supra) is related to the compounding tax during the KGST scenario and the case of the petitioner is related to the KVAT scenario. The contention is that though the petitioner has been paying VAT at compounded rate from 2006-07, no objection as to the inclusion of AST for the computation of compounded tax was raised till the year 2014-15. The petitioner was sleeping over its rights. Such grievances were to be addressed promptly before the appropriate forums and got them redressed. The petitioner has approached this Court without exhausting the statutory remedies. Hence, the Writ Petition is liable to be dismissed.

3. I heard the learned Senior Counsel for the Petitioner, Sri. A. Kumar, instructed by Adv. Smt. G. Mini, and the learned Special Government Pleader (Taxes), Sri. Mohammed Rafiq.

4. The learned Senior Counsel for the Petitioner contended that the issue is squarely covered in favour of the petitioner in Bhima Jewellery (supra). Though the said decision was cited before the Assessing Authority, the Authority plainly rejected the same by illegally holding that the petitioner is not a party to the said decision.

5. The learned Special Government Pleader challenged the maintainability of the Writ Petition against Ext.P24 Assessment Order on the ground that the Petitioner is having effective alternate remedy against it. There is no extraordinary situation to invoke the Writ jurisdiction of this Court to quash an Assessment Order.

6. In view of the objection raised by the learned Special Government Pleader as to the maintainability of the Writ Petition on account of the existence of an alternate remedy before the Assessing Officer, let me answer the said contentio