- (1.) THESE three writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution raise a common point and can be conveniently disposed of by a common judgment.
(2.) THE point raised is that rab or jaggery is "agricultural or horticultural produce, grown by a person or grown on any land in which he has interest", within the meaning of the proviso to section 2(i) of the U.P. Sales Tax Act and is, as such, excluded from computation of "turnover", and consequently exempt from payment of sales tax. It seems to me that the expression "agricultural or horticultural produce grown by a person" cannot properly be used when speaking of rab or jaggery. One may speak of wheat, or rice, or pulses as agricultural produce grown by a person, but one cannot speak of rab being grown. Sri S. N. Misra, learned counsel for the petitioner, has argued that wheat, rice, hemp or pulses are not sold in the market in the form in which they come from the field but only after being subjected to some process of manufacture or at least some process resulting in converting them into a marketable state or condition. Learned counsel has argued that if the same reasoning is applied to the case of rab also, rab should also fall within the expression "agricultural produce grown", because in the case of rab also nothing more is done to sugarcane sticks than to convert them into a marketable shape after they have come out of the field. It may be possible to assent to the logic of this argument but language is not always logical. We have to consider the meaning and appropriateness of the expression used by the Legislature. From the plain meaning of the words and the form of expression which has been used, it appears to me that even though it might be possible, in the case of wheat or rice, or pulses to be described as "agricultural produce grown on land", even after they have been husked and winnowed and polished and put into an edible state, yet this form of words cannot be appropriately used to refer to rab or jaggery. The reason seems to be that wheat, rice, and pulses and possibly hemp also, are still referred to appropriately by the same names, even after they have been subjected to a manufacturing process, but that is not so in the case of sugarcane. Another reason seems to be that it depends upon the degree of manufacturing process to which a particular "agricultural or horticultural produce grown on land" has been subjected. Some produce may still retain its original character at least partially in spite of the manufacturing process, so as to be still recognizable and still describable as it originally used to be; whereas in the case of other produce it may be so changed by the manufacturing process, as to become an altogether different product, e.g., flour in the case of wheat and rab in the case of sugarcane, and may thus cease to be recognizable or describable by its original name.
(3.) THE precise form of words with which we are concerned and this very question came up for consideration in two cases before the Madras High Court, one a Division Bench case reported in K. P. Vaidyanatha Iyer v. The State of Madras ([1954] 5 S.T.C. 94.) and the other a single Judge case reported in State of Madras v. V. R. B. Gopalarathnam Gupta ([1957] 8 S.T.C. 16.). I respectfully agree with the decision in those cases.;