KANWAR BRORS Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE controversy here is with regard to the tax payable on electric fans and electric presses under the Punjab General Sales Tax Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act" ). The question referred for our opinion being :

(2.) THE expression "electrical goods" has not been defined either in the Act or the Rules made thereunder. This being so, it is clearly the "common parlance" rule that must be applied. It will be recalled that while dealing with the matter, whether monoblock pumping sets were electrical goods or agricultural implements under the Act, a Division Bench of this Court in Karnal Machinery Store v. Assessing Authority [1973] 31 STC 3 observed that in the absence of any specific meaning having been given to the expression "electrical goods" either in the Act or the Rules made thereunder, "we have to necessarily construe it and understand the same in the sense it is used in common parlance". In holding so, the Bench also referred to the judgment of the Supreme Court in Commissioner of Sales Tax v. Jaswant Singh Charan Singh [1967] 19 STC 469, where it was observed "while interpreting items in statutes like the Sales Tax Acts, resort should be had not to the scientific or the technical meaning of such terms, but to their popular meaning or the meaning attached to them by those dealing in them, that is to say, to their commercial sense".

(3.) REFERENCE answered in the affirmative. .