TECHNI-GLASS LIMITED Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) At all times material for purposes of this miscellaneous petition, the petitioners company were manufacturing a product to which they gave the name "Cell-O-Therm". This was a thermal insulation product which could be cut and shaped in various forms to serve various insulating needs. It is manufactured from broken glass which is powdered and then mixed with certain chemicals such as carbon black, and flamed in electric furnace and annealed in an 'annealing lelu'. After these processes we have the final product to which the petitioners gave the trade name of 'Cell-O-Therm.' A brick or block of this product has been produced in Court and a block of light, rough, opaque, grey black material is observed. The question involved in this petition is whether this material going by the trade mark is 'glass' or 'glassware' for purposes of excise duty. The petitioners' contention throughout their dispute with the excise authorities has been that their product can never be classified as 'glass' or 'glassware', but the petitioners have not succeeded in establishing their contention before the Assistant Collector of Central Excise and thereafter in appeal before the Collector of Central Excise and finally in revision before the Joint Secretary to the Government of India. It is thereafter that they have moved the Court contending that the approach and the conclusions to be found in these three orders are perverse and cannot and ought not to be sustained by a Court of Law. It is these grievances and contentions of the petitioners which require investigation.

(2.) The excisability of the article is claimed by the Excise authorities under Item 23A(4) of the first Schedule to the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944; the entire item may be set out and it reads as under :

(3.) As stated earlier, the matter has been fully argued before me and all the points which were canvassed before these authorities have again been canvassed before me. Accordingly, since the rival arguments will be set out and discussed it is futile to deal with all these three orders. The latter two of which can be called very unsatisfactory.