ALL INDIA REPORTER LTD Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE only question for decision in this case at present is whether the well-known monthly journal of law, namely, the "All India Reporter" is a periodical for the purpose of Item 26 of the old unamended Schedule II to the Sales Tax Act. Although the publication is known sufficiently well in the legal world, some salient features about it may be mentioned. It is published regularly every month and has separate sections in each monthly part - each with its own series of page numbers - for each High Court in the country and for the Supreme Court and there is besides a separate "Journal" section. Until recently, there used to be sections also for the Federal Court and for the Privy Council. Except for the "Journal" section, each section contains verbatim reports of important decisions of the Courts concerned - the report being preceded by "head notes" summarising the important points of law decided in the case. In the report itself, portions considered imported by the editors are side-lined, with a view apparently to drawing the reader's special attention. At the end of the year a subscriber, who has preserved all the twelve monthly parts, finds it possible to get the reports of decisions of each Court bound in a separate volume, with a continuous paging arrangement. The volumes thus prepared can be preserved as books of reference.

(2.) APPARENTLY the reason that weighed with the learned Commissioner in coming to the conclusion that the publication was not a periodical is the fact last stated in the preceding paragraph, namely, that "the issues of the All India Reporter are bound in volumes and used as books of reference by legal practitioners." The learned counsel for the State has expanded this argument. According to him, the All India Reporter for any particular year is in reality no less than a series of books or volumes containing the case law expounded by the different Courts in the country, though the subject matter of these volumes is published at monthly intervals in a certain form. He says that Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" was first issued in parts at periodic intervals and asks whether such a publication could be considered a periodical. It is not necessary to go so far back into the past for an illustration, as at the moment we have the instance of the biography of Mahatma Gandhi coming out in parts periodically - the publishers having promised the work complete in eight volumes, two of which have already appeared. The second of the arguments of the learned counsel for the State can be disposed of without much difficulty. The criterion partly is whether the publication has been promised for an unspecified period or for a specified period - in the latter case, the subscriber knowing more or less definitely when the receipt by him of the publication will cases - and partly whether the publication is devoted almost wholly to one theme. If the publication is intended for a specified period, to be brought out in a specified number of parts, and if its theme, broadly speaking, is a single one, it is not a periodical - though issued in parts at periodic intervals. If, on the other hand, the publication is likely to continue indefinitely or for an unspecified period - as far as the publisher or the subscriber can see - and if its theme is varied, it would be a periodical, whether it deals with matters pertaining to a single branch of human knowledge like law, or whether it deals with matters relating to more than one branch of human knowledge. As for the first of the arguments, it is immaterial, in my view, what happens at the end of the year - whether a subscriber keeps the twelve parts just as they have been received or whether he gets them bound in the manner explained in paragraph 1. The learned counsel for the State was good enough to agree that there are many excellent periodical publications containing reading matter of more or less permanent interest, which are got bound by the subscriber at the end of the year and kept as books of reference. The only point he apparently wished to make was that the All India Reporter lends itself to being got bound easily in several volumes instead of one volume. This is, of course, a distinguishing feature of the All India Reporter, but I am unable to see how on account of that feature alone the publication suffers in its character as a periodical.

(3.) FOR the reasons given above, I hold that the All India Reporter issued in monthly parts is a "periodical" within the meaning of item 26 of the old Schedule II. The learned counsel for the State has asked what the position would be in regard to the bound volumes sold by the applicant-concern, such as A.I.R. 1950 Nagpur, which is a volume containing the decisions of the Nagpur High Court published by the concern during the year 1950. Here too, I will be guided by the plain meaning of words. Such a volume, taken as a whole, cannot be considered as having been issued periodically. Its sale is a single transaction even where payment is made in more than one instalment. The position then, in brief, is that subscriptions received for the regular supply of the All India Reporter in monthly parts should be excluded from the turnover, as relating to the supply of tax-free goods, while the sale prices of the separate yearly volumes made out of the monthly parts cannot be excluded from the turnover.