MARTAND DAIRY AND FARM Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Mr. S. T. Desai, counsel for the appellants in both the appeals, correctly assured us that the facts are not in dispute, although the legal inference bearing on taxability is very much in controversy.

(2.) The appellant who has arrived in this Court by certificate under Art.133(1) (a) of the Constitution urges before us that he is not liable to sales tax under the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 (LXXIV of 1956) (for short, the Act) sought to be levied from him. Admittedly the appellant is a leading dairy of Benaras and has been sending cream to Calcutta for being converted into butter or ghee. The long journey involved and the considerable quantities despatched necessarily called for protective receptacles during transport. So the cream used to be carefully sent in canisters whose lids were sealed by the seller. The Calcutta buyers received the cream and paid for it on the basis of the ghee/butter recovered from the cream supplied. Although there was some controversy even on the facts, counsel on both sides proceeded on the factual findings recorded by the Judge (revisions) who held that the sales were of cream, that they were inter-State sales and that the exemption extended by Government notification under the Act for cream could not be enjoyed by the assessee as he fell within the area of exclusion contained in the exemption notification. It is appropriate at this stage to reproduce the notification, dated May 10, 1956, under which the exemption is claimed. It reads:

(3.) Fascinated we were by the imaginative and realistic picturisation of the expression 'products sold in sealed containers' projected by Shri S. T. Desai, counsel for the assessee - appellant but, on further reflection, we veered round to the view presented by Sri Sanghi, for the State, that after all law is not always logic and taxation considerations may stem from administrative experience and other factors of life and not artistic visualisation or neat logic and so the literal, though pedestrian, interpretation must prevail.