- (1.) ):- These Review Petitions are directed against the judgment of this Court dated September 7, 1978 disposing of Civil Appeals Nos. 1768 and 1769 of 1972: (AIR 1978 SC 1591).
(2.) Northern India Caterers (India) Ltd. run a hotel in which besides providing lodging and meals to residents it also operates a restaurant where meals are served to non-residents or casual visitors. In a reference made to the High Court of Delhi under S. 21 (3) of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941 as extended to the Union Territory of Delhi, the High Court expressed the opinion that the service of the meals to casual visitors in the restaurant was taxable as a sale. On appeal, this Court took a contrary view and held that when meals were served to casual visitors in the restaurant operated by the appellant the service must be regarded as providing for the satisfaction of a human need and could not be regarded as constituting a sale of food when all that the visitors were entitled to do was to eat the food served to them and were not entitled to remove or carry away uneaten food. Supporting considerations included the circumstances that the furniture and furnishings, linen, crockery and cutlery were provided, and there was also music, dancing and perhaps a floor show.
(3.) Mr. Soli J. Sorabjee, the learned Additional Solicitor General, who had been briefed by the respondent to appear at this stage in the case has, with his usual thoroughness and ability, succeeded in putting together a mass of legal material which we greatly wish had been before the Court when the appeals were originally heard. On the basis of that material, he submits that the judgment delivered by this Court ought to be reviewed. We have no hesitation in saying that had this material been available earlier, it would have enabled the Court to consider still further aspects of the problem and examine it more comprehensively. But having regard to the basis on which the appeals proceeded. We are unable to say that the result would necessarily have been different.;