CANARA JEWELLERS Vs. COMMERCIAL TAX OFFICER SOUTH KANARA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order is made in Writ Petition No. 810 of 1961, which is set down for hearing, and in Writ Petitions Nos. 889, 890, and 891 of 1961, which by consent of parties, are treated as being on the list today for final hearing.

(2.) In these four cases, the petitioners who are bullion merchants and jewellers in Mangalore, complain that the respondent who is a Commercial Tax Officer, functioning under the Mysore Sales Tax Act, 1957, intends to levy sales tax on sales of bullion effected by them not at the rate prescribed by the seventy-fourth entry in the Second Schedule to the Act, as provided by section 5(3)(a) of the Act but under section 5(1) as if none of the Schedules to the Act prescribes the rate at which sales tax is payable in respect of sales of bullion effected by the petitioners.

(3.) The petitioners admittedly buy what is described as mint gold from the Bombay mint, and to every eleven parts of gold, they add one part of copper, and make it into a compound and then sell that compound as sovereign gold. It appears that sovereign gold by which name they call the compound they so prepare is used by the petitioners not only for being sold in lumps as bullion but also for the purpose of manufacturing jewellery.