Inter-State sale treatment bars reassessment as escaped turnover absent proof of a different supply pattern.

Reassessment under the Orissa Sales Tax Act is not justified where sleepers supplied to the railways have already been treated as inter-State sales and brought to Central sales tax. In the absence of material showing that the supply arrangement differed from the previously examined transaction pattern, there is no basis to treat the same turnover as escaped or under-assessed State sales. The impugned reassessment order was therefore unsustainable and the additional State tax demand could not be raised on that basis.

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Issues: Whether the reassessment under section 12(8) of the Orissa Sales Tax Act, 1947 was valid when the sleepers supplied by the assessee to the railways had already been treated as part of inter-State sales and subjected to Central sales tax.

Analysis: The impugned order did not disclose any material showing that the arrangement for supply of sleepers differed from the pattern earlier examined by the Court in comparable cases. The record showed that the sleepers were obtained by the railways through the Divisional Forest Officers and that the transaction followed the established course of supply treated as an inter-State sale. In that setting, the turnover had already been excluded from State sales tax assessment and taken for Central sales tax, and there was no basis to hold that any turnover had escaped assessment or been under-assessed under the State Act.

Conclusion: The reassessment was not sustainable and the assessee succeeded.

Final Conclusion: The impugned reassessment order was quashed and no demand could be raised on its basis, leaving the assessee free from the additional State tax liability sought to be imposed.

Ratio Decidendi: Where goods are shown to have been supplied in the course of an inter-State sale and the turnover has already been brought to Central sales tax, the escaped assessment power cannot be used to reclassify the same turnover as intra-State sale in the absence of material establishing a different transaction pattern.

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