· The assessee, a public charitable trust, was duly registered u/s 12A and was also duly approved u/s 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961.
· The AO, however, in the assessment framed, denied the exemption available to the assessee u/s 11 / 12 of the Act, and this action of the AO was further upheld by the CIT(A).
· It was submitted that the pre-dominant object of the assessee was to provide medical relief through Pranayam and Yoga and also to impart education in the field of Yoga.
· The Hon’ble Tribunal was of the view that Yoga is one of the well recognized traditional system of physical exercise and meditation for attaining physical wellbeing and is a complete medicinal science in itself.
· The Hon’ble Bench further noted that donations which have been received from participants of such camps were purely voluntary, depending upon the paying capacity and willingness of such participants. Further, there was no hard and fast rule that the participants had to mandatorily make donations for the purpose of participating in such camps. In this regard, the Hon'ble Bench also noted that there were various yog camps which had been conducted in the assessment year under consideration, where no donations had been collected at all.
· Besides above, the Hon’ble Bench was of the view that there were several pathies and methods by which the medical relief could be achieved. These pathies are allopathy, homeopathy, neaturopathy, Ayurvedic, Unani, Yoga etc. and a person suffering from any disease including chronic diseases approaches these pathologies and methods for the relief and for such person the pathy or method from which he gets relief is the medical relief from the method or pathy followed by him. In other words, the ultimate goal of all these pathies and methods is to achieve relief and certainly Yog is one of such method or pathy.
· The Bench further noted observed that the very insertion of "Yoga" in the definition of "charitable purpose" under section 2(15) of the Act by the Finance Act, 2015 with effect from 1.04.2016 has removed all the doubts that propagation of yoga itself is a charitable purpose to make the assessee eligible for claiming exemption under sections 11 / 12 of the Act.
For further reading, refer the attachment.
Further Reading