TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1962 (4) TMI 72
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....953, as amended by Bombay Act 10 of 1954, or whether the same is liable to tax under the residuary entry covered by item 80 of the said Schedule?" The respondents are dealers and were at all material times registered under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953. During the period from 1st April. 1954, to 31st March, 1955, the respondents had effected sales of absorbent cotton wool of the value of Rs. 2,23,475-6-2. In their assessment for the said period, these sales were held by the Sales Tax Officer as taxable under item 80 of Schedule B to the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, and not under item I of the said Schedule as contended by the respondents. The Assistant Collector of Sales Tax in appeal upheld this view of the Sales Tax Officer, and the Ad....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....d at the material time read as follows: "Raw cotton (whether ginned or unginned)". Item No. 80 was "all goods other than those specified from time to time in Schedule A and in the preceding entries." It is undisputed that the absorbent cotton wool, which the respondents have sold. is prepared by them by cleaning, boiling, bleaching, drying and carding the ginned cotton, and it is sold as surgical cotton. It is the respondents' contention that although for the preparation of the article, which they have sold as absorbent cotton wool, they have subjected ginned cotton to certain processes, these processes have not changed entirely the form or substance of the material, and the article prepared by them consists of nothing but cotton in its nat....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....bit. Since the entry, as it stood both prior and subsequent to the material period, was wide enough to include absorbent cotton wool, it was hardly likely that only during the intermediate period for which the entry stood as "raw cotton (whether ginned or unginned)", absorbent cotton wool was intended to be excluded from its ambit. The Tribunal accordingly held in favour of the respondents. The learned Advocate-General has argued that the Tribunal has erred in interpreting entry No. 1 in the Schedule as it stood at the material time. It has failed to give the word "raw " sufficient meaning, and it has also failed to give proper consideration to the parenthetical qualification "ginned or unginned" occurring in the entry. He has also urged....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
.... and is described as "prepared from cotton, which consists of the epidermal trichomes of the seeds of Gossypium herbaceum L. and other cultivated species of Gossypium." The preparation is described as follows: "The seeds are removed mechanically and the trichomes, freed from fatty matter by treatment with alkali, are bleached, washed and mechanically loosened and separated to form a fleecy mass of soft white filaments which consists almost entirely of cellulose. Absorbent cotton wool absorbs water readily but its absorbency may be considerably reduced by medication; its absorbency may also be reduced by prolonged storage or by exposure to heat. It may be attacked by moulds when stored under conditions where the moisture in the absorbent cot....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
.... from the bolls even with the seeds removed. He therefore argues that with the word "raw" used as qualifying cotton, and with the expression used in the parenthesis, the meaning of the entry is made clear beyond doubt that what is intended to be included in the entry is cotton in its natural form as obtained from the plant without any further process except perhaps the process of removing the seeds from it. In preparing absorbent cotton wool, the cotton, according to the learned Advocate General, is no longer retained in its raw form. It is subjected to a large number of processes as described in the preparation of the material in the Codex. Thus apart from the process of removing the seeds from the cotton, it is further freed from the fatt....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
.... which is cotton wool or raw cotton, which has been subjected to certain processes of preparation and is a finished or prepared product from cotton wool as the raw material. Raw cotton after it is changed into absorbent cotton wool would neither in its appearance, nor in its tests and qualities give the same results and effects as the raw cotton, which has not undergone the same processes. The argument advanced by the learned Advocate for the respondents that "cotton" so long as it retains essentially its substance as cotton, is included within the entry No. 1 of Schedule B, cannot be accepted in view of the language used in the entry. It is only cotton which can qualify to the description of being raw cotton either in the ginned or ungi....