Don’t smoke; the ashes you leave may be your own
Cigarette giants who rushed to the North Eastern states to get excise exemption benefit and disappeared from there with equal speed if not more, when the exemption was withdrawn, are in for a shock as the Supreme Court dismissed their petition against retrospective withdrawal of the exemption. Once again upholding the parliament’s right to pass retrospective legislation, the Supreme Court remarked,
The competence of Parliament and State legislatures to repeal, amend or supersede an exemption notification is unquestionable.
The power to do so retrospectively cannot be and is also not doubted.
even judicial decisions are in a sense retrospective. When a statute is interpreted by a court, the interpretation is, by fiction of law, deemed to be part of the statute from the date of its enactment
exemptions granted was the quid in return for which the petitioners were not prepared to suffer any quo.
Further an individual who claims a vested right from the defects of law is seeking a windfall and thus the interest in retrospective amendment over weighs the individual’s interest in benefiting from the defect.
The state has been deprived of revenue without any corresponding benefit
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