Brief Facts of the Case :-
The appellants claim that they are running a College of Nursing as also a School of Nursing offering educational courses leading to the degree of B.Sc.Nursing and Sc.Nursing and that as is imperatively necessitated under the Regulations issued by the Nursing Council of India, they have to have a 120-150 bedded parent/affiliated hospital for each programme as an essential clinical facility. They assert that they are thus obligated to run a hospital by name Sanjoe Hospital which they maintain is the parent hospital as required under the Regulations and that since the said hospital provides clinical facilities to the College of Nursing and the School of Nursing run by them, they are entitled to exemption from payment of building tax for the hospital building. This claim is obviously underpinned on the postulation that the said hospital has been set up essentially for educational purposes.
Held by High Court
Honourable Supreme Court in S.H.Medical Centre Hospital v. State of Kerala [2014 (1) KLT 316 (SC)] which is an authority for the proposition that a hospital attached to a Medical College can be treated as a building used for educational purposes only when the medical relief offered in the said hospital is free of cost.
We would assume that if at all a claim is laid out that a hospital exists only for the purpose of a College or School of Nursing, it would then have to be made manifest by the asserter that the hospital caters solely to the purposes of students of such School or College and that all the profits and earnings from such hospital is being used solely for the purposes of the School or College Nursing, perhaps even to subsidise the eduction of the students. If this had been so, then it could have been possibly maintained by the appellants that they are not running the hospital for profit and that they are, therefore, entitled to exemption in confirmity with the judgment of the Honourable Supreme Court in S.H.Medical Centre Hospital (supra). Perhaps, if the appellants had a case that even though the hospital does not offer medical relief free of cost but that all the amounts or at least all the profits received from the hospital are put to use for the educational institutions, then we would suspect that they could have possibly gained a better footing to claim exemption. In any event of the matter, the case of the appellants is quite to the contrary. They admit that the hospital does not offer free medical relief nor that it is meant only for the purpose of the School and College of Nursing. They do not admit in any manner that all the profits from the hospital are used for the educational institutions or that the hospital is being run solely for the purposes of the educational institutions. If that be so, obviously, this is a case where issues raised by the appellants are squarely covered by the precedents mentioned above.
In such event of the matter, we are in full concurrence with the judgment of the learned single Judge and see no reason to deviate from it in any manner whatsoever. We, therefore, dismiss this writ appeal.
