M.R.SHARMA,J. - (1.) WHETHER chillies are exigible to purchase tax under the Punjab General Sales Tax Act (hereinafter called the Act) or not is the short point involved in Civil Writ Petitions Nos. 6318, 6390 and 7421 of 1975, which are being disposed of by this Judgment.
(2.) IT is submitted on behalf of the petitioners that chillies should be regarded as vegetables, which are mentioned in Schedule B to the Act and under Section 6 of the Act no tax can be levied on goods specified in the first column of this schedule. It is conceded that if a commodity is rightly included in Schedule C to the Act, it can be exigible to purchase tax. The precise argument raised is that it is not open to the State Government to include an article which answers the description of vegetables in Schedule C to the Act in exercise of powers under Section 31 of the Act. The constitutional validity of Section 31 of the Act is also challenged on the ground that it confers wide and arbitrary power on the State Government to specify commodities on which purchase tax can be levied. For the first contention reliance has been placed on behalf of the petitioners on a Judgment reported as Mangulu Sahu Ramahari Sahu v. Sales Tax Officer, Ganjam A. I. R. 1974 S. C. 390. While relying upon an earlier case reported as Ramavatar Budhaiprasad v. Assistant Sales Tax Officer, Akola A. I. R. 1961 S. C. 1325, their Lordships of the Supreme Court observed as under : . . . the word 'vegetables' must be construed neither in a technical sense nor from the botanical point of view ; it should be understood as in common parlance. A word which is not defined in the Act but which is a word of every day use must be construed in its popular sense. In that case, this Court took the view that the word 'vegetables' should be understood as denoting the class of vegetables which are grown in kitchen garden or in a farm and are used for the tables. There can be no dispute that both chillies and lemons are grown in kitchen gardens or at any rate in farms and they are used for the tables.
(3.) IN the context in which the chillies were being considered by the Supreme Court along with lemons, it is obvious that their Lordships regarded those chillies as vegetables which were being used for the tables. This Judgment is no authority for the proposition that even dried chillies which are usually sold by the grocers can also be regarded as vegetables. No order of assessment has been passed in either of these cases and in this situation I cannot assume that the petitioner in these cases were dealing in green chillies alone, nor can such a controversial question of fact be properly determined in proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution. The petitioners would have been well-advised to wait for the determination of this fact by an Assessing Authority whose Judgment could be more properly questioned before the Appellate Tribunal. This ground alone is sufficient to non-suit the petitioners.;