TMI Blog1976 (7) TMI 144X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ale or purchase of which is liable to tax under this Act, in circumstances in which no tax is payable under section 5, and either- (a) consumes such goods in the manufacture of other goods for sale or otherwise; or.................. shall, whatever be the quantum of the turnover relating to such purchase for a year, pay tax on the taxable turnover relating to such purchase for that year at the rates mentioned in section 5." 2.. That timber logs purchased by the assessees are subjected to some treatment, labour and manipulation, namely, sawing and, very often, some processing prior to that, and that as a result thereof, some change or transformation occurs to those logs admit of no doubt. But are the timber logs "consumed in the manufa ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... sidering the question as to whether "item 63-Timber" in the First Schedule of the Andhra Pradesh Sales Tax Act is comprehensive enough to include planks, rafters, cut sizes, etc., the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Ramaswamy v. State of Andhra Pradesh[1973] 32 S.T.C. 309. held that they would fall under that entry and observed that merely because they are sawn or cut from logs of wood their character is not altered and they would continue to be raw materials which by themselves and in the same form cannot be put to construction purposes. But we are afraid that this decision was not concerned with the question raised in these cases. And so far as that question is concerned, we are of the view, that it is of no consequence that timber after saw ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... n essentially the same commercial article, it cannot be said that the final product is the result of manufacture. The decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court might perhaps be justified on the ground that a printed or dyed cloth is commercially a different article from the cloth which is purchased and printed or dyed." 4.. In Pyare Lal Khushwant Rai v. State of Punjab[1974] 34 S.T.C. 341., on which some reliance was sought to be placed by the learned counsel for the petitioners, it was held that certain trees which could be used only as fuel wood would remain fuel wood even after felling of those trees and cutting them into small pieces and that, therefore, no manufacturing process was involved in chopping off the branches of these trees ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ed out earlier, whether the whole and the pieces obtained out of it by application of labour remain essentially the same commercial article. This, in our view, is supported by the decision of the Supreme Court in State of Tamil Nadu v. Pyare Lal Malhotra[1976] 37 S.T.C. 319 at 324-325 (S.C.)., again, another decision that reiterated the commercial identity test as explained above, where it was said, no doubt in another context that: "The mere fact that the substance or raw material out of which it is made has also been taxed in some other form, when it was sold as a separate commercial commodity, would make no difference for purposes of the law of sales tax. The object appears to us to be to tax sales of goods of each variety and not the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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