STATE OF ORISSA Vs. DAS GLASS COMPANY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AT the instance of the Revenue, the Orissa Sales Tax Tribunal has referred for the opinion of this Court, the following question of law :

(2.) THE dispute relates to the assessment year 1984 - 85. Admittedly, the dealer -opp. party carried on business in glass, mirror, straw board etc. at Puri. During the period in question the opp. party, who is a registered dealer had collected tax at 12% on the sale of glass sheets and paid tax at that rate on the turnover of glass sheet. However, in appeal before the Assistant Commissioner of Sales Tax, Puri the dealer contended that it had wrongly collected and paid tax at 12% on the sale of glass sheet which in fact ought to have been taxed at 8% as an unspecified item. The contention was accepted and the matter was remanded to the Assessing Officer for a fresh assessment and, it was also directed that action be taken against the dealer under Section 9 -B(3)(a) (ii) of the Orissa Sales Act, 1947 (in short, 'the Act'). Aggrieved with the said order, the Revenue went up on appeal before the Tribunal which was turned down. However, on an application under Section 24 (1) of the Act, the question, as stated above, has been referred to this Court for its opinion.

(3.) THE learned counsel for the Revenue made a reference to the decision of this Court in the case of Shantilal Kalidas v. State of Orissa, (1978) 42 S.T.C. 9 wherein the question for consideration was whether 'glass bangles' are covered by the term 'glassware' . Therein, it was observed that since glassware has no statutory definition, but in view of the definition given in the dictionary, glassware would mean articles made of glass. The Court further observed that in construing entry 38, (at the relevant time) the common parlance theory is to be invoked and since in popular sense glassware would ordinarily refer to articles made of glass, the internal indication in the said entry by excluding certain class of articles made of glass from the ambit of glassware coupled with the popular sense establishes that all articles made of glass would be glassware for the purpose of that entry. Accordingly, glass bangles were held to be covered by the term 'glassware' in entry 38.