(1.) These are connected batches of civil appeals and special leave petitions. We grant special leave to appeal in all the petitions (condoning the delay in the filing of the unnumbered one referred to below) and proceed to dispose of all the appeals by this common judgment. The details of the appeals and petitions are, for sake of convenient reference, tabulated below:
(2.) We shall discuss later the manner in which these appeals and petitions have arisen.
(3.) The validity of the levy of a "cess", based on the royalty derived from mining lands, by the States of Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh is challenged in these petitions and appeals. A seven Judge Bench of this Court in India Cement (1990) 1 SCC 12 struck down a similar levy under a Tamil Nadu Act as beyond the legislative competence of the State Legislature. The assessees, in the matters now before us, claim that the issue here is directly and squarely governed by the above decision. The States, on the other hand, claim that the nature and character of the levies imposed by them is totally different from that of the Tamil Nadu levy and that they are entirely within the scope of the States' Legislative powers under the Constitution. This is the issue to be decided in these matters. As the impugned enactments of Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh mutually differ from one another in some respects, they will need separate consideration. However, the basic issue being the same, all these matters have been heard together and it is found convenient to dispose of them all by this common judgment. We may mention in passing that, initially, these matters were listed before a Bench of two Judges of this Court. It referred the matters on 17-8-1990 to the learned Chief Justice for the constitution of a larger bench. The matters have come up before us in pursuance of the directions of the Hon'ble Chief Justice.
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