SYNDICATE BANK Vs. COMMERCIAL TAX OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is a nationalised bank who appears to have extended certain facility to a company by name M/s. Gladstone Lyall & Co. Ltd. Certain agreements are said to have been executed between the petitioner and the said company, whereunder certain goods like movables, plant and machinery have been hypothecated in favour of the petitioner-bank. The hypothecated plant and machinery were liable to be sold by the petitioner-bank in the event of a default in payment by the borrowing company. The borrower appears to have committed such a default, with the result that in exercise of the powers available to it under the hypothecation agreement in question, the petitioner-bank sold by auction the goods hypothecated with it. While these goods were yet to be moved outside the State of Karnataka by the purchaser, the Commercial Tax Officer (Intelligence), Check-Post, Mangalore and the Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, Mangalore Division, Mangalore, issued notices annexures B, C and D to the writ petition dated April 11, 1989 and July 21, 1989, calling upon the petitioner not to deliver the goods sold by it to the purchasers till such time the sales tax liability on the same was determined and cleared under the Act. Aggrieved by this notice, the petitioner has come up to this Court in the present writ petition for a writ of certiorari quashing the same.

(2.) The petitioner's case is that the respondents are in error in treating the petitioner to be a "dealer" within the meaning of the Karnataka Sales Tax Act, 1957.

(3.) I have heard Sri Ramabadran, learned counsel appearing for petitioner and the Government Advocate for the respondents.