The assessee who had been engaged in providing services to certain foreign buyers of frozen seafood and/or marine products and had received service charges from such foreign buyers/enterprises in foreign exchange, claimed deduction under S. 80-O of the Act as applicable for the relevant assessment year/s.  The AO denied the  deduction essentially with the finding that the services rendered by respective assessees were the ‘services rendered in India’ and not the ‘services rendered from India’ and, therefore, the service charges received by the assessees from the foreign enterprises did not qualify for deduction in view of clause (iii) of the Explanation to S. 80-O of the Act . Tribunal allowed the claim of the assessee. On appeal High Court affirmed the order of the AO . On appeal the Supreme Court affirmed the order of the High Court . The Supreme Court observed that  the sweeping proposition in some Supreme Court decisions that when two views are possible, the one favourable to assessee has to be preferred & that a tax incentive provision must receive liberal interpretation, is disapproved by the Constitution Bench in Commissioner of Customs v.  Dilip Kumar (2018) 9 SCC 1 (FB).  when applied to incentive provisions like those for deduction, would also be that the burden lies on the assessee to prove its applicability to his case; and if there be any ambiguity in the deduction clause, the same is subject to strict interpretation with the result that the benefit of such ambiguity cannot be claimed by the assessee, rather it would be interpreted in favour of the revenue. In view of the Constitution Bench decision in Dilip Kumar & Co. (supra), the generalised observations in CIT v . Baby Marine Exports (2007)  290 ITR 323 (SC) with reference to a few other decisions, that a tax incentive provision must receive liberal interpretation, cannot be considered to be a sound statement of law; rather the applicable principles would be those enunciated in UOI v. Wood Papers Ltd. (1990) 4 SCC 256, which have been precisely approved by the Constitution Bench  The burden is on the assessee to prove eligibility to an incentive or exemption provision and it is subject to strict interpretation. If there is ambiguity, the benefit of the ambiguity has to go to the Revenue. However, if the assessee proves eligibility, a wide and liberal construction of the provision has to be done .  Merely having a contract with a foreign enterprise and mere earning foreign exchange does not ipso facto lead to the application of s. 80-O of the Act   (CA Nos 2506-2509 of  2020 dt  5-06 -2020 )  (AY. 1993 -94 to 1997 -98)