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2019 (10) TMI 1291 - HC - VAT and Sales TaxDate of exemption - amendment in the notification - exemption from tax under Notification G.O.Ms. No.146 Commercial Taxes and Registration (B2) Department on 08.08.2007 - manufacture and sale of ‘beedi, beedi tobacco, tobacco leaves, snuff and cheroot’ - According to the petitioners, the exemption granted to ‘chewing tobacco’ should be made available from the date of original Notification as the exclusion thereof had been an obvious omission that stood corrected from date of second Notification by ‘substitution’ of the amended list of products in respect of which exemption was granted - HELD THAT:- In addition to the other parameters in play such as the language employed and the date of amendment among others, it is the intention behind the amendment that is perhaps the main determinant as to how the amendment is itself to be construed and applied, whether prospectively or retrospectively. As far as the tobacco dealers are concerned, a comparison of the first and second Notifications does not reveal anywhere the intention that the word ‘chewing tobacco’ had been inadvertently omitted, originally. The use of the word ‘substituted’ only means that, going forward, the second Notification will take the place of the first Notification. By virtue of the second Notification having come to be, the first stands effaced. This much is clear. However, there is nothing else in the second Notification or any other explanatory instruction/circular/note that has been brought to my attention to lead me to a conclusion that the substitution was to take effect from the date of the first Notification itself. By virtue of the second Notification, an entirely new commodity has been brought within the beneficial sweep of the exemption, marking a departure in the original intention of the legislature as to the range of products that would be so entitled - if at all the intention that the second Notification were to act retrospectively were to be attributed to Legislature, such intention should be manifest or at least discernible from the Notification itself, from the objects thereof, or at the least, draw support from some tangible material. Retrospectivity of application of an Act/Notification/Provision cannot be an incident that is assumed in vaccum or a request that can be accepted for the mere asking. The petitioner makes much of the fact that chewing tobacco, according to it, is nothing but a product of tobacco and the original Notification intended, according to it, to cover tobacco and all its products. According to them, the fact that tobacco and cheroot have been mentioned originally would itself be sufficient to bring all products of tobacco within the realm of the first exemption and the second then, becomes just clarificatory and hence retrospective in operation. Thus, where legislature intended that upon mere mention of a commodity, all forms and descriptions of the commodity would stand encompassed, it is seen to employ the phrase 'of all kinds' or ‘of all sorts’. There is thus no force in the argument of the petitioner that mere mention of tobacco and cheroot should be taken as including chewing tobacco as well. If this had been the intention of the legislature it would have been so mentioned. Thus, reading the phrase ‘chewing tobacco’ in the first Notification, would result in rewriting the Notification itself and in the light of the settled position that an exemption Notification has to be strictly construed, rewriting of the same by insertion of new words is wholly impressible - writ petitions filed by the tobacco dealers are dismissed.
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