Concise Legal Commentaries

  "Noscitur a sociis" means to know from the association.   When two or more words which are susceptible to an analogous meaning are put together, they are to be understood in their cognate sense i.e. in their related nature . The associated words take their colour from each other with the meaning of the more general being restricted to a sense parallel or similar to that of the less general. A word maybe known by the company it keeps, resultant of which, the associated words often explain and limit each other . This principle helps in finding the true legislative intent and , therefore, cannot prevail where wider words are deliberately used. To understand the application of "noscitur a sociis" through the two main objectives which it tries to attain i.e. the explanation and limitation of a certain word with respect to its surrounding words and to fulfill the actual legislative intent engraved in the statute , the following two cases of Mangoo Singh v. Election T...

  A statute which imposes taxes on income and certain other kinds of transactions is one that qualifies to be a taxing statute . It comes in various forms such as income tax, wealth tax, sales tax, gifts tax etc. A taxing statute consists of many parts. The application of strict construction of taxing statutes is applicable only to the taxing provisions such as the charging provisions or the provisions imposing penalty and not to those parts of the statute which contain the machinery provisions  [ Commissioner of Income Tax v. National Taj Traders, AIR 1980 SC 485 ]. Machinery provisions are not generally subject to a rigorous construction and the courts are expected to construe the machinery sections in such a manner that a charge to tax is not defeated. The object of such a statute is primarily to collect revenue for the government and to serve as the main source of revenue generation for the State. It is levied for public purpose and the money so collected is utilised f...