The State of Madhya Pradesh and another Vs Commercial Engineers and body building company limited (Supreme Court)
Date- 14th October 2022
Sub-When Writ petition under Article 226/227 of the Constitution of India can be entertained by Courts disregarding the statutory remedy available under the respective Act.

The Supreme Court of India in this short judgement was considering SLP of the Department under Madhya Pradesh Value Added Tax Act where the High Court in terms of powers under Article 226 entertained a writ petition by quashing the order denying input credit u/s 14 of the said Act by observing that there are no disputed questions of facts involved in the matter and it is a question to be decided on admitted facts for which no dispute or enquiry into factual aspects of the matter is called for.
However, the Supreme Court while holding that the aforesaid ground cannot be a valid ground for entertaining writ under article 226 also observed that in a tax matter the writ petition cannot be entertained by passing statutory remedy and referred to a recent decision in the case of The State of Maharashtra and Others v. Greatship (India) Limited (Civil Appeal No. 4956 of 2022, decided on 20.09.2022) which had relied on United Bank of India v. Satyawati Tondon and others, reported in (2010) 8 SCC 110 where it was interalia held that Article 226 is not meant to short-circuit or circumvent statutory procedures. It is only where statutory remedies are entirely ill-suited to meet the demands of extraordinary situations, as for instance where the very vires of the statute is in question or where private or public wrongs are so inextricably mixed up and the prevention of public injury and the vindication of public justice require it that recourse may be had to Article 226 of the Constitution.

The above judgement being latest in this series, whenever Article 226 is resorted to , the same will have to be distinguished in the light of the above principles.

Ramesh Patodia
15-10-2022