Dealer status under the Central Sales Tax Act must exist in the relevant period; later widening of the definition could not apply retroactively.

Liability under the Central Sales Tax Act turned on whether the assessee answered the statutory description of a dealer during the relevant assessment years. The earlier finding that the sleeper supply arrangement was not a profit-making business, but a mode of performing an obligation to the railway administration, was applied again, and the assessee was held not to be a dealer for those periods. The later amended definition of "dealer" could not be used because it came into force after the assessment years in question. The writ applications succeeded and the assessment orders were quashed.

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Issues: Whether the petitioner was liable to be assessed to tax under the Central Sales Tax Act for the assessment years 1974-75 and 1975-76, and whether the amended definition of "dealer" brought in later could affect that liability.

Analysis: The petitioner had earlier been held not to be a dealer because the sleeper supply arrangement was not a business undertaken for profit but a mode of fulfilling an obligation to the railway administration. That reasoning was held to govern the present assessments as well. The later amendment widening the definition of "dealer" was noticed, but it was found to have come into force after the relevant assessment periods and therefore could not govern the assessments in question.

Conclusion: The petitioner was not a dealer within the meaning of the Central Sales Tax Act during the relevant period and was not liable to assessment under that Act.

Final Conclusion: The writ applications succeeded and the assessment orders were quashed.

Ratio Decidendi: Liability under the Central Sales Tax Act depends on the assessee answering the statutory description of dealer for the relevant period, and a subsequent enlargement of that definition cannot be applied to earlier assessments.

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