KHANNA J. - This civil revision filed by Daulat Ram and three other petitioners is directed against the order of learned Additional Rent Controller, Delhi, whereby he allowed the claim of privilege in respect of certain document made by the Income Tax Officer and Sales Tax Officer.

The brief facts of the case are that Som Nath, Om Prakash, Satya Pal and Jagdish Chander, respondents No. 1 to 4, all of whom are brothers, filed a petition for ejectment from the premises in dispute u/s 14 of Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958, against Daulat Ram and Ram and Ram Lal, respondents Nos. 5 and 6, and the four petitioners. The ejectment was sought on the ground that Daulat Ram and Ram Lal, respondents, had sublet, assigned and parted with possession of the premises in dispute in favor of the petitioner. During the pendency of those proceedings the petitioner applied for summoning the clerk of the Income Tax Officer with balance-sheet and profit and loss accounts for the year 1950 to 1954 of Rama Machinery Stores Company. The case of the petitioner was that Rama Machinery Stores Company was carrying o business in the suit premises since 1950 as a tenant and that Lachhman Singh, petitioner, was a partner of that firm. After summons had been issued, in accordance with the prayer of the petitioners, the Income Tax Officer sent a letter claiming privilege in respect of the production of the documents u/s 54 of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1922. According to the Income Tax Officer he could not produce the aforesaid documents on account of the bar created by that provision of law.

The petitioner also applied for summoning the clerk of the officer of the Commissioner of Sales-tax, Delhi, with the file of Rama Machinery Stores Company and that of Golden Machinery Stores Company. It was also mentioned by the petitioners that they were particularly keep about the production of application forms S. T. I. relating to the registration of the above-mentioned two firms. After summons, as prayed by the petitioners, had been issued and served, the Sales Tax Officer wrtoe a letter claiming privilege to the production of the aforesaid document u/s 25 of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Ac, 1941, as extended to Delhi.

The petitioners contested the claims of privilege made by the Income Tax Officer and the Sales Tax officer. The learned Additional Rent Controller, after hearing arguments in the matter, upheld the claims of privilege and ordered that the authorities concerned could not be called upon to produce the documents in question. The petitioners having felt aggrieved have now come up to this court.

Mr. Vohra, on behalf of the petitioner, has assailed the impugned order and has contended that the claims of privilege should have been disallowed. As against that, Mr. Khanna, on behalf of the four landlord-respondent, and Mr. Kirpal, on behalf of the Income Tax Officer who too has been imp leaded as a respondent in the revision, have canvassed for the correctness of the decision of the Additional Rent Controller. Before dealing with the claim of privilege made by the Income Tax Officer, I shall deal with the claim made by the Sales Tax Officer because this aspect of the case affords no difficulty. Sub-section (1) of section 25 of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941. as extended to the Union Territory of Delhi, reads as under :

&quto;All particulars contained in any statement made, return furnished or accounts or documents produced in accordance with this Act, or in any record of evidence given in the course of any proceedings under this Act, other than proceedings before a Criminal Court, shall, save as provided in sub-section (3), be treated as confidential, and ntowithstanding anything contained in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (I of 1872), no court shall, save as aforesaid, be entitled to require any servant of the Government to produce before it any such statement, return account, document or record or any part thereof, or to give evidence before it in respect thereof.&quto;

A bare perusal of the above provisions of law makes it clear that, except is some specified case, with which were not concerned, no court shall be entitled to require production of any statement made, return furnished or accounts or document produced in accordance with the provision of the above Act. The language of the section is of a comprehensive nature and prevents the productions of all kinds of documents and return which have been filed with the sales tax authorities. The document sought to be produced from the Sales Tax Officer are of the kind covered by the above section, and, in the circumstances, the Sales Tax Officer, in my opinion, was fully justified in claiming privilege to the production of those documents.

Coming now to the privilege claimed by the Income Tax Officer, I find that sub-section (1) of section 54 of the Income Tax Act, 1922 (XI of 1922), under which the privilege has been claimed, reads as under :

&quto;All particulars contained in any statement made, returns furnished or accounts or documents produced under the provisions of this Act, or in any evidence given, or affidavit or deposition made, in the course of any proceedings under this Act other than proceedings under this Chapter, or in any record of any assessment proceedings, or any proceedings relating to the recovery of a demand, prepared for the purpose of this Act, shall be treated as confidential, and ntowithstanding anything contained in the India Evidence Act, 1872 (I of 1872), no court shall, save as provided in this Act, be entitled to require any public servant to produce before it any such return, accounts documents or record or any part of any such record, or to give evidence before it in respect thereof.&quto;

On 1st April, 1962, the Income Tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961), came into force and as from that case the Indian Income Tax Act of 1922 including section 54 was repealed. Sub-section (1) of section 137 of the Act of 1961 was substantially the same as sub-section (1) of section 54 of Act of 1922. In the sub-section (3) of section 137 of the Act of 1961 are enumerated a number of matters in respect of which the bar to disclosure was removed. Section 138 of Act of 1961 empowered the Commissioner of Income Tax if he was satisfied that there were no circumstances justifying its refusal to furnish or cause to be furnished the information asked for ntowithstanding anything contained in section 137 of the Act. Finance Act, 1964 (5 of 1964), came into force on 1st April, 1964, and by this Act a number of amendments were made in the Income Tax Act of 1961. Section 137 of the Income Tax Act to 1961 was omitted and for section 138 the following section was substituted :

&quto;138. Disclosure of information respecting assesseds. -(1) Whether a person makes an application to the Commissioner in the prescribed form for any information relating to any assessed in respect of any assessment made either under this Act or the Indian Income Tax Act, 1922 (11 of 1922), on or after in 1st day of April, 1960, the Commissioner may, if he is satisfied that it is in the public interest so to do, furnish or cause to be furnished the information asked for in the respect of that assessment only and his decision in this behalf shall be final and shall not be called in question in any court of law.

(2) Ntowithstanding anything contained in sub-section (i) or any other law for the time being inforce, the Central Government may, having regard to the practices and usages customary or any other relevant factors, by order ntoified in the Official Gazette, direct that no information or document shall be furnished or produced by public servant in respect of such matters relating to such class of assessed or except to such authorities as may be specified in the order.&quto;

The application by the petitioners for summoning the clerk of the Income Tax department with the records in question was made in the present case in 1966, long after the Indian Income Tax Act of 1922 had been repealed and section 137 of the Income Tax Act 1961 had been omitted. There was, at the time of the application, no provisions corresponding to section 54 of the Act, of 1922 and section 137 of the Act of 1961, about the ban on production of the records in question by the Income Tax authorities. The case set up on behalf of the department is that the relevant records, relating to the years 1950 to 1954, were filed when section 54 of the Act of 1922 was in force and as under that section there existed a privilege against the production of those documents in court, the same could not be affected even through the aforesaid section was subsequently repealed. There appears to be force in this plea. Section 6(c) of the General Clauses Act, 1897 (10 of 1897), reads as under :

&quto;6. Whether this Act, or any Central Act or Regulation made after the commencement of this Act, repeals any enactment hitherto made or hereafter to be made, then, unless a different intention appears, the repeal shall nto......

(c) affect any right, privilege, obligation of liability acquired, accrued or incurred under any enactment so repealed;....&quto;

Sub-section (1) of section 54 of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1922 (XI of 1922), forbids the production of the various documents, statement and returns in court. The prohibition created by that provision is of a comprehensive nature and absolute in terms, and covers all kinds of documents including those the like of which were summoned in this case. Sub-section (2) of section 54 provides that, if a public servant discloses any particulars contained in any statement, return, accounts, documents, evidence, affidavit depositions or record, he would be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to six months, and would also be liable to fine. Dealing with the prohibition contained in the above provision of law, Shah J., speaking for the court in Charu Chandra Kundu v. Gurupada Ghosh observed :

&quto;It is manifest that disclosure of information given to public servants in the course of Income Tax proceedings has by a comprehensive provisions been prohibited. The Income Tax authorities are directed by the provision to treat the information disclosed, evidence given, and document produced as confidential : the courts are prohibited from requiring any public servant to produce the document or the records and even to give evidence in respect thereof, and the public servants disclosing the particular of the evidence, documents or record are penalised. The statement alleged to be made by the respondent in the assessment proceedings is not of the nature described in sub-section (3) of section 54, and is thereof not exempt from the operation of sub-section (1) and (2). There being an express interdict against the court requiring production of the document, the subordinate judge was right in declining to accede to the request of the appellant. Mr. Chatterjee appearing on behalf of the appellant contends that section 54 is enacted only for the prtoection of the assessed, and if the assessed waives the privilege enacted for his prtoection, the prohibition, the prohibition contained therein will be inoperative. But there is no such exception, express or implied, in the language used by the legislature. The prohibition imposed against the court by section 54 is absolute : its operation is not obliterated by any waiver by the assessed in whose assessment the evidence is tendered, document produced or record prepared.&quto;

As a privilege existed in respect of the production of the documents in question at the time they were filed before the Income Tax authorities in the present case, the aforesaid privilege could not be affected because of the repeal of section 54 of the Act of 1922, in view of the plain language of clause (c) of section 6 of the General Clauses Act.

Mr. Vohra, however, contends that, as the provisions of section 54 of the Act of 1922 as well as its corresponding provision, viz., section 137 of the Act of 1961, have been repealed, this fact would reveal &quto;a different intention&quto; mentioned in section 6 of the General Clauses Act. This contention, in my opinion, is not well founded. Repeal of an enactment by itself and, in the absence of any other additional circumstance, cannot show that the legislature has intended that the rights, privileges, obligations or liabilities acquired, accrued or incurred are affected or set at naught. The acceptance of this contention would be tantamount to making a dead letter of clause (c) of section 6 of the General Clauses Act. The plain inference from clause (c) of section 6 necessarily is that the repeal of an enactment would not affect the rights, privileges, obligations or liabilities acquired, accrued or incurred under the enactment so repealed, unless there appears a different intention. Something more than repeal simplicities of the enactment would be essential in order to substantiate a plea of &quto;different intention&quto;. It is true that the repeal of the Act of 1922 was simultaneously accompanied by fresh legislation on the subject but the fresh legislation, in my opinion, does not manifest an intention to destroy the privilege which had already accrued in respect of the documents which were filed at the time section 54 of the Act of the 1922 was in force. No doubt, there has been some kind of erosion of the privilege which was in existence u/s 54 of the Act of 1922 after the repeal of the aforesaid Act, but the privilege still exists substantially in some form or the other and has not been altogether effaced. The privilege was allowed to continue 8by section 137 of the Act of 1961 and it was only in respect of certain matters enumerated in sub-section (3) of that section that the bar to disclosure was removed. After section 137 too was repealed by the Finance Act, 1964 (5 of 1964), section 138, as it exists at present, was enacted, and according to sub-section (1) of that section, the Commissioner of Income Tax is made the sole authority to decide as to whether it is in public interest to furnish or cause to be furnished the information asked for in respect of any assessment. It is obvious that, in view of the above provision, if the Commissioner of Income Tax decides not to furnish the information in question, the same cannot be supplied. It also cannot be said that the prohibition about the supply of information, in case the Commissioner of Income Tax decides not to supply such information, can be set at naught by summoning a clerk of the Income Tax department with the documents containing the information. I, Therefore, find it difficult to hold that the subsequent legislation reveals an intention to destroy the privilege which had accrued in respect of documents filed at the time section 54 of the Act of 1922 was enforced. The provisions of section 6(c) of the General Clauses Act were considered in State of Punjab v. Mohar Singh Pratap Singh and it was observed :

&quto;Whenever there is a repeal of an enactment, the consequences laid down in section 6 of the General Clauses Act will follow unless, as the section itself says scarcely any room for expression of a contrary opinion. But when the repeal is followed by fresh legislation on the same subject we would undoubtedly have to look to the provisions of the new Act expressly keeps alive old rights and liabilities but whether it manifests an intention to destroy them. We cannot Therefore subscribe to the broad proposition that section 6 of the General Clauses Act is ruled out when there is repeal of an enactment followed by a fresh legislation. Section 6 would be applicable in such cases also unless the new legislation manifests an intention incompatible with or contrary to the provisions of the section. Such incompatibility would have to be ascertained from a consideration of all the relevant provisions of the new law and the mere absence of a saving clause is by itself not material. It is in the light of these principles that we now proceed to examine the facts of the present case.&quto;

My attention has been invited to the decision of Venkataraman J. in the case of S. V. Ramakrishna Mudaliar v. Mrs. Rajabu Fathima Bukari In that case the learned judge referred to the provisions of section 6(c) of the General Clauses Act and observed that the rights and obligations of the Commissioner of Income Tax in respect of the claim of privilege to the production of documents would continue by virtue of section 6(c) of the General Clauses Act. Although section 137 of the Act of 1961 had been repealed, it was observed :

&quto;According to the criterion of the Supreme Court in State of Punjab v. Mohar Singh Pratap Singh, the limited prohibition contained in the ntoification u/s 138(2) cannot be taken as destroying the prohibition under the old law, namely, section 137 of the Act of 1961. Rather, the correct view would be that, in addition to the old law, the ntoification u/s 138(2) also contain a prohibition in respect of particular documents specified. As for section 138(1), that too cannot be taken as in any way destroying the prohibition contained in section 137 of the Income Tax Act of 1961. Section 138 (1) deals only with what the Commissioner may do when a party applies to him, and does not touch the sphere covered by section 137(1) of the Act of 1961, which lays down the prohibition of evidence of documents being tendered in court by the Officer.&quto;

I may state that in another Single Bench case, decided by Sadasivam J., Income Tax Officer, Central Circle I, Madras v. P. Ramaratnam a somewhat contrary view appears to have been taken, but, with all respect, I would prefer the view taken by Venkataraman J. in the case of Ramakrishna Mudaliar.

The result is that the petition fails and is dismissed, but, in the circumstances, I leave the parties to bear their own costs of the revision.

Petition dismissed.