MAL LODHA, J. - (1.) DEALER-non-petitioner No. 1, at the relevant time, carried on business of gowar gum and gowar churi. The Assistant Commercial Taxes Officer, Ward 'C', Pali (assessing authority), by his assessment order dated 22nd April, 1972, for the period 22nd October, 1968, to 30th October, 1970, charged tax on the sale of gowar churi at the rate of 2 per cent. He did not accept the claim of the dealer that gowar churi was exempt from payment of tax under item No. 9 of the Schedule to the Rajasthan Sales Tax Act, 1954 (Act No. 29 of 1954) (for short "the Act"). The dealer (assessee) filed appeal and the Deputy Commissioner (Appeals), Commercial Taxes, Jodhpur, by his order dated 9th January, 1974, allowed the appeal and held that gowar churi being cattle feed and being item different from gowar, falls under entry 9 of the Schedule and is, therefore, exempt from tax. The assessing authority filed a revision before the Board of Revenue, Ajmer ("the Board" herein). The Division Bench of the Board, by its order dated 16th February, 1979, rejected the revision holding that gowar churi is fodder and as such exempt from the payment of tax according to entry 9 of the Schedule. We may read the material part of the order of the Board dated 16th February, 1979 : "We are of the opinion that gowar churi is used mostly for cattle feed purposes. Gowar has perhaps been deleted from the totally exempted items of fodder from the payment of tax under section 4(1) of the Rajasthan Sales Tax Act as it is also used as raw material for preparation of gum which is a commercial item. The intention of the legislature for exempting pulses and fodder is to give relief to the consumers and agriculturists. As has been certified by the different firms and is well-known, gowar churi cannot be used for any other purposes and as has been held in the above-referred two cases the best test for considering any item as fodder is the extensive use to which that commodity is put to."
(2.) THE Commercial Taxes Offer (Revisions), Ajmer, filed an application under section 15(1) of the referring the question of law arising out of the order dated 16th February, 1979, of the Board. As that application was not disposed of within the period of 180 days from the date of the application, the petitioners have filed the application under section 15(3A) of the Act for a direction to the Board to refer the following question of law to this Court for decision : "Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case involving an assessee who runs gum industry and has no connection with cattle, the Board was right in holding that gowar churi is cattle feed and exempt from tax under entry No. 9 of the Schedule to the Rajasthan Sales Tax Act, 1954 ?" During the pendency of this application, the Rajasthan Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, 1984 (No. 20 of 1984) (for short "the Amendment Act"), came into force from 1st May, 1985. Accordingly, to section 13(10) of the Amendment Act, this application is to be heard as a revision under section 15 of the Act, as substituted by the Amendment Act and disposed of as such. Accordingly, we have treated this application under section 15(3A) of the Act as a revision under section 15 of the Act as substituted by the Amendment Act. We have heard Mr. K. C. Bhandari for the petitioners and Mr. Rajendra Mehta for the dealer-assessee. The question of law that arises is whether gowar churi is not included in gowar, which is mentioned in entry 9 of the Schedule appended to the Act, for, it is a cattle feed. The relevant portion of the Schedule is as follows : "No tax shall be payable on the sale or purchase of the following goods : ----------------------------------------------------------------------- S. No. Description of goods Conditions and exceptions subject to which exemption is allowed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. Cattle feeds, excluding gowar, cotton-seeds and oil-cakes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- According to entry 9 of the Schedule, which is material for the relevant period, the cattle feeds, which do not include gowar, cotton-seeds and oil-cakes, tax was payable on sale or purchases, even if they might have been used as cattle feeds. The learned counsel for the petitioners contended that "gowar churi" is not exempt from payment of sales tax in accordance with entry 9 - cattle feeds exclude gowar, which includes gowar churi and gowar husk. On the other hand, Mr. Rajendra Mehta, the learned counsel for the dealer-assessee, strenuously contended, while supporting the order of the Board, that gowar churi is used as cattle feed and is not included in the word "gowar" and so no sales tax is payable on the sale or purchase of gowar churi in accordance with entry 9 as it stood at the relevant time. We have given our most anxious and thoughtful consideration to the rival contentions of the learned counsel for the parties. In this connection, we shall consider the meaning of "gowar" as used in the entry 9, as is understood by the dealer when it sells it any by the purchaser when he purchases it. In other words, what is the meaning of word "gowar", as commonly understood by persons dealing in that commodity. It was ruled in Annapurna Carbon Industries Co. v. State of A.P. [1976] 37 STC 378 (SC), while construing entry No. 4 of the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act (Act No. 6 of 1957), that for determining the meaning of a particular commodity the deciding factor is the predominant or ordinary purpose or use.
(3.) THE question that cropped up in Delhi Cloth and General Mills Co. Ltd. v. State of Rajasthan [1980] 46 STC 256 (SC) before the Supreme Court was whether the word "fabric" includes tyre cord fabric, for the purpose of exemption from tax under the Act. His Lordship, Pathak, J., speaking for the court, made the following weighty observations : "In determining the meaning or connotation of words and expressions describing an article or commodity the turnover of which is taxed in a sales tax enactment, if there is one principle fairly well-settled, it is that the words or expressions must be construed in the sense in which they are understood in the trade, by the dealer and the consumer. It is they who are concerned with it, and it is the sense in which they understand it that constitutes the definitive index of the legislative intention when the statute was enacted." A question arose in Indo International Industries v. Commissioner of Sales Tax [1981] 47 STC 359 (SC) whether hypodermic clinical syringes could be regarded as "glassware" under entry 39 of the First Schedule to the U.P. Sales Tax Act, 1948. While examining the question, V. D. Tulzapurkar, J., expressed himself in the following words : "It is well-settled that in interpreting items in statutes like the Excise Tax Acts or Sales Tax Acts, whose primary object is to raise revenue and for which purpose they classify diverse products, articles and substances, resort should be had not to the scientific and technical meaning of the terms or expressions used, but to their popular meaning, that is to say, the meaning attached to them by those dealing in them. If any term or expression has been defined in the enactment then it must be understood in the sense in which it is defined, but in the absence of any definition being given in the enactment the meaning of the term in common parlance or commercial parlance has to be adopted." In that case, reference was made to Commissioner of Sales Tax v. Jaswant Singh [1967] 19 STC 469 (SC), wherein it was observed : "Now, there can be no dispute that while coal is technically understood as a mineral product, charcoal is manufactured by human agency from products like wood and other things. But it is now well-settled that 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." ;