AJJAMPUR RANGAPPA Vs. CITY MUNICIPALITY DAVANGERE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A question of some importance has been mooted in this petition, under Art.226. The City Municipality of Davangere has been levying and collecting octroi on Poppy, Jeera Ani, Ajwan and Menthya, treating them as spices, while the contention of the petitioner is that they are chargeable to duty as oil-seeds.

(2.) The petitioner is a merchant at Davangere trading in a variety qf provisions including the articles mentioned above. The Municipality has been levying octroi on goods brought for use within the Municipal limits. For the purpose of levy, the goods have been catagorised into different classes which have been set out in the schedule of the goods, liable to octroi duty. Class I in the said schedule consists of food stuffs and miscellaneous Class II is headed 'Animals' Class III consists of articles used 'for fuel lighting and waning. Item 5 in the said Class reads 'all sorts of oil seeds including cotton seeds but not including ground-nut. The levy of octroi on these, oil-seeds is 3P. per 10 Kgs. Class V is headed drugs, spices and perfumes'. Item 4 therein sets out 'spices and wet imli excluding salt petre'. The levy of octroi on spices and wet imli is at 2 per cent ad valorem. The petitioner, in support of his contention that Poppy, Jeera Ani, Ajwan and Menthya, are oil-seeds and not spices relied upon a decision of this Court in Venkataramana Setty N Sons v. State of Mysore STRP 31/62 d/.22-8-1963.. In that case the question for consideration was whether the said articles were oilseeds within the meaning of the word oil-seeds' under Entry 5 (d) of the Fourth Schedule to the Mysore Sales Tax Act, 1957. This Court held that they should be regarded as oil-seeds' within the said entry and accordingly directed the levy of sales tax. , In my view, the above, decision is not directly applicable to the case on hand. The question herein has to be resolved on the scope of the relevant items in the schedule of goods chargeable to octroi duty, i.e. Item 5 in Class III, and Item 4 in Class V of the Schedule.

(3.) In the statement of objections filed for the Municipality, it is stated that the said commodities are grown and used for the purpose of food stuffs only as spices and are not being used for extracting oil. It is further stated that by and large those commodities are consumed as such and vary little is being used for extraction of oil for special purposes. It is also stated that the fact that oil may be extracted out of them does not make them 'oilseeds' either in common parlance or otherwise.