Exhaustive taxing entry by "namely" limits animal feed classification, so dog feed and cat feed are excluded from nil-rate treatment.

Dog feed and cat feed were held to fall outside entry 5 of the First Schedule to the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act, 2003, which grouped "animal feed and feed supplements" and then used "namely" to introduce specific items such as poultry feed, cattle feed, pig feed, fish feed, fish meal, prawn feed and shrimp feed. The Court treated the enumerated items as exhaustive, so the entry could not be extended to unlisted goods by broad construction. Reliance on an earlier decision concerning section 29(2) of the Limitation Act, 1908 was rejected as inapplicable because this was a goods-classification question, not interpretation of connected statutory sentences.

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Issues: Whether dog feed and cat feed fall within entry 5 of the First Schedule to the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act, 2003 so as to attract nil rate of duty.

Analysis: Entry 5 grouped "animal feed and feed supplements" as one category and used the word "namely" to introduce specific instances such as poultry feed, cattle feed, pig feed, fish feed, fish meal, prawn feed and shrimp feed. The Court read the comma and the word "namely" as showing that the listed items formed an exhaustive specification of the category. On that construction, the entry was confined to the enumerated items and did not extend to dog feed or cat feed. The reliance placed on the earlier decision concerning section 29(2) of the Limitation Act, 1908 was held inapplicable because the present entry concerned the classification of goods, not the construction of connected sentences in a limitation provision.

Conclusion: Dog feed and cat feed do not fall within entry 5 of the First Schedule to the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act, 2003, and the assessee was not entitled to nil rate of duty.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a taxing entry uses a restrictive phrase followed by "namely" and an enumerated list, the list is exhaustive and the entry cannot be extended to unmentioned goods by general words or broad construction.

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