GCDA Employees'' Pension Fund Trust vs The Commissioner of Income Tax

Antony Dominic, J.—This appeal is filed against the order passed by the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal in I.T.A. No. 503/Coch/2013 by which, the order passed by the Commissioner of Income-tax rejecting the application made by the appellant for registration under Section 12AA of the Income-tax Act(''the Act'' for short) was rejected.

We heard the learned Senior Counsel for the appellant and the learned Standing Counsel for the respondents.

The facts of the case are that, the appellant is a Trust. The object of the Trust is to pay pension to the employees of the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) from the corpus created out of the contributions made by the employees of the GCDA itself. Taking the view that the said object of the Trust did not spell out any charitable purpose as defined in Section 2(15) of the Act, registration under Section 12AA was declined and was affirmed by the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal.

The learned Senior Counsel for the appellant contended that even if it is true that the distribution of pensionary benefits is to the employees of the GCDA itself, this activity of the Trust is general public utility attracting the provisions of Section 2(15) of the Act and that therefore the Trust is entitled to registration as prayed for. The learned Senior Counsel also placed reliance on the judgments in Commissioner of Income Tax, Bombay Vs. Bar Council of Maharashtra, , Hiralal Bhagwati Vs. Commissioner of Income Tax, , Coffee Board Vs. Deputy Commissioner of Agricultural Income Tax, Mysore, , Commissioner of Income Tax, Madras Vs. Andhra Chamber of Commerce, , Commissioner of Agricultural Income Tax Vs. Rubber Board, , Commissioner of Income Tax, Gujarat-III, Ahmedabad Vs. Ahmedabad Rana Caste Association, and Norka Roots Vs. Commissioner of Income Tax, in support of his contentions.

As we have already stated, the object of the Trust is to pay pension to the employees of the GCDA or their dependents from out of the corpus collected from the beneficiaries themselves. In other words, the employees of the GCDA are contributing and from out of that contribution, they or their dependents are getting pension. Such an object implemented by the appellant-Trust cannot be said to be an object of general public utility attracting Section 2(15) of the Act. The decisions cited by the learned Senior Counsel are all cases where the beneficiaries are persons other than the contributories and therefore the principles laid down in those cases are not applicable to the facts of this case. The learned Senior Counsel also made reference to the list of other institutions which are registered under Section 12AA of the Act. The eligibility for registration depends upon the object of each of those Trusts. Such objects are not before us. In such circumstances, we are unable to rely on the list now provided to us.

We therefore do not find any reason to disagree with the view taken by the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal.

The Income-tax Appeal fails and the same is dismissed.