Average sugar production under exemption notifications must exclude nil-production periods when calculating the divisor.

Under the later sugar exemption notifications, nil-production periods in preceding sugar years had to be excluded when computing average sugar production. The wording of Notifications Nos. 132/82 and 135/83 was treated as materially different from the earlier Notification No. 146/74: whereas the earlier notification allowed exclusion only where an entire sugar year had no production, the later notifications required the corresponding nil-production periods to be ignored for average calculation. The appellants' method of counting those nil-production periods in the divisor was rejected, and the correct interpretation was that only productive periods were to be used in the average.

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Issues: Whether, while computing average sugar production under the relevant exemption notifications, periods of nil production in one or more of the preceding sugar years had to be ignored, and whether the average had to be calculated by dividing only by the years in which production actually occurred.

Analysis: The notifications were compared with the earlier Notification No. 146/74. Under the earlier notification, only a sugar year with no production at all could be ignored. The later Notifications Nos. 132/82 and 135/83 used materially different language, providing that where production in any of the preceding sugar years was nil, the corresponding period in which no production occurred had to be ignored while determining the average. The earlier Tribunal decision on the same wording was followed, and the later notifications were held to require exclusion of nil-production periods for the purpose of average calculation.

Conclusion: The appellants' method of including nil-production periods in the divisor was rejected. The correct interpretation was that nil-production periods were to be excluded under the later notifications, and the appeals failed.

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