Case Law Details
The exclusive activity of the Assessee is the publication and printing of text books and their distribution to Government schools and schools of the MCD, NDMC, etc. This activity has continued uninterruptedly since the time of its inception, i.e., from AY 1971- 72 on wards. The fact that the Assessee is a non-profit organization is not in dispute. Its essential activities are administered by the BODs comprising of officers of the Government of India as well as GNCTD, in its ex officio capacity. The textbooks are provided by the Assessee to the students at subsidized rates. Even the textbooks books, reading materials and school bags are being distributed free to deserving students. The essential activity of the Assessee is connected with ‘education’ and nothing else.
In Sole Trustee, Loka Shikshana Trust Vs. CIT (supra), the Supreme Court explained as under:
“The sense in which the word “education” has been used in section 2(15) is the systematic instruction, schooling or training given to the young in preparation for the work of life. It also connotes the whole course of scholastic instruction which a person has received. The word “education” has not been used in that wide and extended sense, according to which every acquisition of further knowledge constitutes education. According to this wide and extended sense, traveling is education, because as a result of traveling you acquire fresh knowledge. Likewise, if you read newspapers and magazines, see pictures, visit art galleries, museums and zoos, you thereby add to your knowledge. Again, when you grow up and have dealings with other people, some of whom are not straight you learn by experience and thus add to your knowledge of the ways of the world. If you are not careful, your wallet is liable to be stolen or you are liable to be cheated by some unscrupulous person. The thief who removes our wallet and the swindler who cheats you teach you a lesson and in the process make you wiser though poorer. If you visit a night club, you get acquainted with and add to your knowledge about some of the not much revealed realities and mysteries of life. All this in a way is education in the great school of life. But that is not the sense in which the word “education” is used in clause (15) of Section 2. What education connotes in that clause is the process of training and developing the knowledge, skill, mind and character of students by normal schooling.”.
The preparation and distribution of text books certainly contributes to the process of training and development of the mind and the character of students. There does not have to be a physical school for an institution to be eligible for exemption. What is important is the activity. It has to be intrinsically connected to ‘education’.
Reverting to the case on hand, the Court finds that what the ITAT has held in the impugned order is contrary to the settled law as explained in the above decisions. The ITAT came to the erroneous conclusion that merely because the Assessee had generated profits out of the activity of publishing and selling of school text books it ceased carrying on the activity of „education.‟ The ITAT failed to address the issue in the background of the setting up of the Assessee, its control and management and the sources of its income and the pattern of its expenditure. The ITAT failed to notice that the surplus amount was again ploughed back into the main activity of ‘education’. The question to be asked was whether the activity of the Assessee contributed to the training and development of the knowledge, skill, mind and character of students? In the considered view of the Court, the answer to that question had to be, in the facts and circumstances outlined above, in the affirmative.
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