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1981 (7) TMI 81

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..... ttar Pradesh notified under Section 3A(2) of the U.P. Sales Tax Act, 1948 that the turnover in respect of the following goods set forth in Item No. 6 of the attached schedule would be liable to tax at all points of sale at 3.1/2 % : - "6. All kinds of minerals and ores and alloys except copper, tin, zinc, nickel or alloy of these metals only." On may 30, 1975 the State of Uttar Pradesh published a notification, under Section 3A(2A) of the Act, in which Item No. 1 of the schedule read as follows :- "1. All kinds of minerals, ores, metals and alloys except those included in any other notification issued under the Act." and a rate of 2% was prescribed. The notification dated December 1, 1973 was amended and Item No. 6 was deleted. 4. On August 14, 1975 the U.P. Legislature enacted the U.P. Sales Tax (Amendment and Validation) Act, 1975 Section 31(7) of which amended the aforesaid notification of May 30, 1975 retrospectively, so that it would be deemed always to have read as follows :- "1. All kinds of minerals, ores, metals, and alloys including sheets and circles used in the manufacture of brass wares and scraps containing only any f the metals, copper, tin, zinc or nickel exce .....

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..... and therefore directed the Sales Tax Officer to re-examine the matter. 8. The present appeals are directed against the part of the High Court judgment refusing relief in regard to rolled products and extrusions. It is vehemently contended that the High Court has erred in holding that the rolled products and extrusions are new commercial commodities distinct from the aluminium ingots and billets from which they are prepared. It is urged that they represent the marketable form merely of ingots and billets. We have been referred to a number of documents and publications as well as the Aluminium (Control) Order, 1970, and the submission is that when reference is made to aluminium as a metal it includes rolled products and extrusion products. 9. We are not satisfied that the appellant is right. There is no doubt that, as laid down by this Court in Porritts & Spencer (Asia) Ltd. v. State of Haryana, (1978) 42 S.T.C. 433-1983 E.L.T. 1284 a word describing a commodity in a sales tax statute should be interpreted according to its popular sense, the sense being that in which people conversant with the subject matter with which the statute is dealing would attribute to it. Words of everyda .....

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..... 71, dated October 6, 1971. In all those notifications the framers of the notifications followed the scheme that one clause dealt with the metal in its original saleable form and another separate clause dealt with the fabricated forms in which it was saleable as a new commodity. It is admitted before us on behalf of the appellant that aluminium ingots and billets are saleable commodities as such in the market. In the circumstances, the inference is irresistible that when such a notification refers to a metal, it refers to the metal in the primary or original form in which it is saleable and not to any subsequently fabricated forms. It is true that in the notification, dated May 30, 1975, as amended retrospectively on August 14, 1975, the entry reads : "All kinds of minerals, ores, metals, and alloys including sheets and circles used in the manufacture of brass wares and scraps containing only any of the metals, copper, tin, zinc, or nickel except those included in any other notification issued under the Act." But here, the expression "including" does not enlarge the meaning of the word "metal" and must be understood in a conjunctive sense, as a substitute for "and". This is the re .....

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..... steel in the shape of bars, flats and plates, must be regarded as continuing to be "iron and steel" for the purpose of the notification issued under the Madhya Bharat Sales Tax Act. The case has, however, been distinguished by this Court in State of Tamil Nadu v. Pyare Lal Malhotra (1976) 37 S.T.C. 319 and 325-1983 E.L.T. 1321 on the ground that the nature of the raw material from which the goods were made was the decisive criterion for deciding the earlier case. It observed : "The language of the notification involved there made it clear that the exemption was for the metal used. In the cases before us now, the object of single point taxation is the commercial commodities and not the substance out of which it is made. Each commercial commodity here becomes a separate object of taxation in a series of sales of that commercial commodity so long as it retains its identity as that commodity." And the Court then referred with approval to Devi Dass Gopal Krishnan (supra). 14. Our attention has been invited to State of Gujarat v. Shah Veljibhai Motichand, Lunawada, (1969) 23 S.T.C. 288 where the Gujarat High Court held that corrugated iron sheets were merely "iron" in another shape an .....

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