Composite textile processing treated as single manufacture where tariff notes cover any one or more specified operations.

Tariff notes deem bleaching, mercerising, dyeing, printing, waterproofing, shrink-proofing, organdie processing, or any one or more of those operations to amount to manufacture. The phrase "any one or more of these processes" was read to mean that a composite series of such textile-processing operations by the same manufacturer constitutes one manufacturing event, not separate manufacturings at each stage. On that construction, duty is not chargeable at every individual process, and the demand and penalty could not be sustained.

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Issues: Whether, under Note 3 to Chapter 52 and Notes 4 to Chapters 54 and 55 of the Tariff, duty was payable each time the fabrics underwent an individual process, or whether the combined or totality of the processes undertaken by the same manufacturer constituted manufacture only once.

Analysis: The tariff notes treat bleaching, mercerising, dyeing, printing, waterproofing, shrink-proofing, organdie processing, or any one or more of these processes as amounting to manufacture. The wording "any one or more of these processes" indicates that the legislature contemplated manufacture when one process is applied, and also when more than one such process is carried out by the same manufacturer as part of a single course of processing. Reading the note as requiring duty at each separate stage would make that phrase redundant. The construction adopted earlier in Indian Rayon and Industries Ltd. supported the same conclusion, though on a different basis.

Conclusion: The process sequence undertaken by the appellant amounted to manufacture as a whole, and duty was not payable separately at each stage of processing. The issue is decided in favour of the assessee.

Final Conclusion: The demand and penalty could not be sustained on the basis that each individual process constituted a separate manufacture, and the impugned order was set aside.

Ratio Decidendi: Where tariff notes deem any one or more specified textile-processing operations to amount to manufacture, a composite series of such processes by the same manufacturer is to be treated as a single manufacturing event rather than as separate manufactures at each stage.

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