Corresponding law doctrine: State tobacco rules were repealed on extension of central excise law, voiding later licence-fee rules.

An earlier State tobacco regime can be treated as a corresponding law to the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944 if it substantially covers the same subject matter, even if the mechanisms differ and exact identity is absent. Here, the State laws and rules regulating tobacco through licensing, control, storage, transport, import, export and sale corresponded sufficiently to the Central Act, so section 13(2) of the Finance Act, 1950 repealed them on extension of the Central law. Once that enabling law ceased to operate, fresh 1951 licence-fee rules could not be validly made and the levy lacked authority of law.

---

---

Issues: Whether the Travancore and Cochin tobacco laws and the rules made thereunder stood repealed under section 13(2) of the Finance Act, 1950, on the extension of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944, and whether the fresh licence-fee rules made in 1951 were without authority of law.

Analysis: The controlling test was whether the earlier State law, read with the rules in force on 1 April 1950, substantially corresponded to the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944. Exact identity was not required. The earlier State enactments and rules regulated tobacco through a comprehensive licensing and control scheme covering cultivation, manufacture, storage, transport, import, export and sale, and the later Central enactment likewise regulated excisable tobacco through levy, licensing and ancillary controls. The fact that the State regime realised revenue through auction or licence-fee machinery rather than by an express charging section did not alter its essential correspondence with the Central law. Once the Central Act was extended to the Part State and the earlier law was a corresponding law, section 13(2) operated to repeal it. Without a surviving enabling law, the State could not validly frame fresh rules or levy the impugned fee, and any such levy offended the requirement that tax be imposed only by authority of law.

Conclusion: The earlier Travancore and Cochin tobacco laws were repealed by section 13(2) of the Finance Act, 1950, and the new rules made in 1951 were invalid and without legal authority.

Concurring Opinion: Shah J. agreed with the result, but confined the correspondence most clearly to the provisions requiring licences and fees for storage and sale of tobacco. On that basis also, the 1951 rules could not support the levy of licence fee.

Ratio Decidendi: Where an earlier State enactment substantially covers the same subject matter as a Central enactment extended to the State, the earlier law is a corresponding law and stands repealed by the extension provision; any later levy or rule dependent on the repealed law is void for want of authority.

---