1964 (9) TMI 41

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....e General Sales Tax Act. On a check of his accounts, it was held that the amounts realised by the petitioner in connection with the removal of sand represented realisations out of sale of sand and that the turnover in this regard was assessable to tax. Assessments were made upon him accordingly for the two years 1959-60 and 1960-61. The petitioner appealed objecting to the levy of sales tax, his principal contention before the appellate authority being that he had only leased out his right to various buyers, who quarried the sand and took it away. According to him, the sales were involved in such quarrying contracts and were exempt under the relevant notification issued by the Government. This contention was not however accepted. The Appell....

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.... persons who required sand to remove the sand from the area over which he had obtained the right referred to and he charged a sum of Re. 1.50 nP. in respect of every lorry-load of sand so removed. It is perfectly plain that what the petitioner did was to sell one lorry-load of sand for a specified figure. Virtually, what he told the purchasers was, "here is sand belonging to me. You can remove it on payment of this sum for every lorry load." This is not different from the case of persons in possession of goods offering to sell the goods to purchasers at a price fixed. But learned counsel seeks to complicate this perfectly simple transaction by claiming that for the purpose of the removal of the sand, quarrying has to be done. Therefore it b....

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....nly a right of removal by way of sub-lease that had been granted, then one could say that it was a species of transfer of immovable property that was involved and not a sale of goods. But that, as a matter of fact, had been found against by both the Department and the Tribunal. Some decisions were referred to, but these decisions relate to the exemption notification under the 1939 Act, but nevertheless the underlying principle is not different. In Gopala Mining and Mineral Works v. State of Andhra[1957] 8 S.T.C. 4., the learned Judges of the Andhra High Court observe: "What is exempted is quarrying contracts of those materials but not the out and out sale of those materials. It may be that the Government though it fit to exempt contra....