NAVARATHANA CHEMICALS Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Assessee has come up in this revision aggrieved by the order passed by the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal, Additional Bench, Kozhikode. Following are the questions of law arising for our consideration.

(2.) Assessee has claimed the benefit of confessional rate of tax in view of SRO No. 1091/99. The said SRO defines the expression "manufacture" as follows:

(3.) The definition of the expression "manufacture" given in S.R.O. No. 1729/93 came up for consideration in Swapna Bone Meal Co. (P) Ltd. v. District Level Committee for S.T. Exemption (2004) 12 KTR 183 : 2004 (1) KLT SN 10. The court held that the process of crushing bones and making it into bone pieces of the size and dimension required for a customer is only a conversion of bone from one form to another form and that is specifically excluded from the scope of manufacture under the definition clause provided in the notification, SRO No. 1729/93. While deciding the question as to whether element of manufacture is involved, we have to look at the raw materials used and the products manufactured. Definition clause excludes mere packing of goods, polishing, cleaning, grading, drying, blending or mixing different varieties or the same goods, sawing, grading processing one form of goods into another form of the same goods by mixing with chemicals or gas, fumigation or any other process applied for preserving the goods in good condition or for easy transportation, conversion of rubber latex into centrifugal latex, raw rubber sheet, ammoniated latex, crepe rubber, crumb rubber or any other item falling under entry 110 of the first schedule or treating the raw rubber in any form with chemicals to form a compound of rubber by whatever name called. In this case, manufacturing process was done outside the State of Kerala and the dealer was only converting the manufactured sodium silicate to liquid sodium silicate. The conversion of soluable glass into liquid sodium silicate is not a manufacturing process, since no manufacturing process was done in the unit. The assessee is therefore not eligible for the reduced rate of tax at 8% on the sales of sodium silicate. The assessing authority has therefore rightly assessed the turnover to tax at 12%. Revision therefore lacks merits and the same is dismissed.