D. Sathiah and Co. vs Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal and Others

Satyanarayana Raju, J.—This is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution for the issue of a writ of certiorari quashing the order of the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal in T.A. No. 75 of 1956 dated 15th February, 1957.

The petitioner is a firm engaged in the manufacture and sale of chuttas out of tobacco purchased by them. For the assessment year 1954-55, their gross turnover was determined by the Sales Tax Officer at Rs. 89,798-14-8 and the taxable turnover at Rs. 76,858-14-2, out of which Rs. 57,061-11-8 was subjected to an additional tax of 6 pies in the rupee u/s 4(2) of the Hyderabad General Sales Tax Act. The petitioner challenges the assessment on the ground that there is no justification for the levy of additional tax on the sales turnover of chuttas because they are different from "cheroots and cigars" which are included in item 12 of Schedule II of the Act.

Item 12 of Schedule II reads:-

Goods on which an additional tax is leviable :

* * * 12. Cigars, cheroots, pipe tobacco and tinned tobacco used in Cigarettes and paper-loose, cigarettes costing more than two annas per packet of ten cigarettes.

Item 12 mentioned in Section 3(2-A) of the Madras General Sales Tax Act is an analogous provision and is in the following terms:-

Cigars and cheroots sold at less than Six pies for every rupee two annas per cigar or cheroot. in the turnover. 5. It is contended by Mr. Ranganathachari that chuttas which are prepared from country tobacco involve no manufacturing process and that the tax on chuttas at the purchase point after taxing raw tobacco at the sale point amounts to double taxation. This very point was considered by a Division Bench of this Court, consisting of Subba Rao, C.J. and Jaganmohan Reddi, J., in P.T.T.C. & S. Merchants Union v. State of Andhra Pradesh [1958] 9 S.T.C. 723 at p. 740, where it has been held that cigars and cheroots involve a process of manufacture and that these products cannot by any stretch of language be said to be the raw form of leaf. It is argued by the learned counsel for the petitioner that chuttas are intended for the poorer classes and are different from cigars and cheroots. The question as to whether chuttas involve a process of manufacture does not depend upon the class of people by which they are used. Both cheroots and chuttas are prepared after removing the stumps and cutting the leaves into convenient strips and twisting the longer leaves round the shorter pieces which are used as stuffing material. Indeed the learned counsel for the petitioner admitted that the word "chutta" is derived from the Tamil word "suriti" which means "twisting". I do not find any essential distinction between the process involved in the manufacture of cigars and cheroots on the one hand and chuttas on the other hand. It must therefore be held that the contention of double taxation has no foundation.

As rightly pointed out by Mr. Ranganathachari, the decision of the Supreme Court in Kailash Nath v. State of U.P. [1957] 8 S.T.C. 358 does not seem to have been brought to the notice of the learned Judges who decided the above case. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court have held that printing and dyeing the original cloth does not result in a metamorphosis and notwithstanding the change of appearance and colour, the cloth remains the same. I do not think that the principle of this decision can be applied to the present case. It must therefore be held that the petitioner is not entitled to any relief.

The writ petition is dismissed with costs. Advocate''s fee Rs. 100.