Distinct statutory classification controls tax treatment; de-oiled cakes are not "oil-cakes" and remain exempt.

De-oiled cakes were held not to fall within the expression "oil-cakes" in entry 44 of Schedule B of the Punjab General Sales Tax Act, 1948. The Court reasoned that the Legislature had separately classified oil-cakes and de-oiled cakes in the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, showing that the two commodities were treated as distinct for tax purposes; that statutory distinction could not be overridden by applying the common parlance test to deny exemption. De-oiled cakes were therefore entitled to exemption from sales tax for the relevant period, and the reference was answered in favour of the assessee.

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Issues: Whether de-oiled cakes were covered by the expression "oil-cakes" in entry 44 of Schedule B of the Punjab General Sales Tax Act, 1948 so as to be taxable as such.

Analysis: The entry originally covered only fertilizers, and oil-cakes were later excluded from that exemption. The question was whether de-oiled cakes, after extraction of oil, could still be treated as oil-cakes on a common parlance approach. The decisive consideration was that the Legislature itself had separately dealt with oil-cakes and de-oiled cakes in entry 27 of Schedule B of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973, by expressly excluding both categories from fertilizers. That statutory treatment showed that the two commodities were regarded as distinct, and the common parlance test could not be used to collapse them into one category for taxation.

Conclusion: De-oiled cakes were not oil-cakes within entry 44 and were entitled to exemption from sales tax for the relevant period.

Final Conclusion: The reference was answered against the department and in favour of the assessee by holding that de-oiled cakes could not be taxed as oil-cakes under the relevant entry.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the Legislature treats two commodities as distinct by separate statutory classification, their tax treatment must follow that distinction and the common parlance test cannot be used to merge them for denying exemption.

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