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 documents made by the Income-tax Officer and Sales Tax Officer.

2. The brief facts of the case are that Som Nath, Om Parkash, Satya Pal and Jagdish Chander, respondents Nos. 1 to 4, all of whom are brothers, filed a petition for ejectment from the premises in dispute under section 14 of Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958, against Daulat 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 favour of the petitioners. During the pendency of those proceedings the petitioners applied for summoning the clerk of the Income-tax Officer with balance-sheet and profit and loss accounts for the years 1950 to 1954 of Rama Machinery Stores Company. The case of the petitioners was that Rama Machinery Stores Company was carrying on 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 under section 54 of the Indian Income-tax Act of 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 petitioners also applied for summoning the clerk of the office 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 keen 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 wrote a letter claiming privilege to the production of the aforesaid documents under section 25 of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941, as extended to Delhi.

3. 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.

4. Mr. Vohra, on behalf of the petitioners, 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-respondents, and Mr. Kirpal, on behalf of the Income-tax Officer, who too has been impleaded 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:

“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 notwithstanding 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.”

5. A bare perusal of the above provision of law makes it clear that, except in some specified cases, with which we are not concerned, no court shall be entitled to require production of any statement made, return furnished or accounts or documents produced in accordance with the provisions of the above Act. The language of the section is of a comprehensive nature and prevents the production of all kinds of documents and returns which have been filed with the sales tax authorities. The documents sought to be produced from the Sales Tax Office 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.

6. 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 of 1922 (XI of 1922), under which the privilege has been claimed, reads as under:

“All particulars contained in any statement made, return 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 proceeding, or any proceeding relating to the recovery of a demand, prepared for the purposes of this Act, shall be treated as confidential, and notwithstanding anything contained in the Indian Evidence Act, 187.2 (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.”

7. On 1st April, 1962, the Income-tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961), came into force and as from that date 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 the Act of 1922. In 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 notwithstanding 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 of 1961 was omitted and for section 138 the following section was substituted:

“138. Disclosure of information respecting assessees.—(1) Where a person makes an application to the Commissioner in the prescribed form for any information relating to any assessee in respect of any assessment made either under this Act or the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922 (11 of 1922), on or after the 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 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) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1) or any other law for the time being in force, the Central Government may, having regard to the practices and usages customary or any other relevant factors, by order notified in the Official Gazette, direct that no information or document shall be furnished or produced by a public servant in respect of such matters relating to such class of assessees or except to such authorities as may be specified in the order.”

8. 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 of 1961 had been omitted. There was, at the time of the application, no provision 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 though 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:

“6. Where this Act, or any Central Act or Regulation made after the commencement of this Act, repeals any enactment hitherto made or here after to be made, then, unless a different intention appears, the repeal shall not ……

(c) affect any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired, accrued or incurred under any enactment so repealed;…”

9. Sub-section (1) of section 54 of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922 (XI of 1922), forbids the production of the various documents, statements 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, [1961] 43 I.T.R 83, 86 S.C., observed:

“It is manifest that disclosure of information given to public servants in the course of income-tax proceedings has by a comprehensive provision been prohibited. The income-tax authorities are directed by the provision to treat the information disclosed, evidence given, and documents produced as confidential: the courts are prohibited from requiring any public servant to produce the documents or the records and even to give evidence in respect thereof, and the public servants disclosing the particulars 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 therefore not exempt from the operation of sub-sections (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 protection of the assessee, and if the assessee waives the privilege enacted for his protection, 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 assessee in whose assessment the evidence is tendered, document produced or record prepared.”

10. 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.

11. 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 “a different intention” 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 simpliciter of the enactment would be essential in order to substantiate a plea of “different intention”. 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 opnion, 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 1922 was in force. No doubt, there has been some kind of erosion of the privilege which was in existence under section 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 by 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 that 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, Son Of Pratap Singh and it was observed:

“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, a different intention appears. In the case of a simple repeal there is 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, but only for the purpose of determining whether they indicate a different intention. The line of enquiry would be, not whether 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.”

12. My attention has been invited to the decision of Venkataraman J. in the case of S.V Ramakrishna Mudaliar v. Mrs. Rajabu Fathima Bukari [1965] 58 I.T.R 288, 297.. 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:

“According to the criterion of the Supreme Court in State Of Punjab v. Mohar Singh, Son Of Pratap Singh, the limited prohibition contained in the notification under section 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 notification under section 138(2) also contains 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 or documents being tendered in court by the Officer.”

13. 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.

14. Petition dismissed.