1967 (8) TMI 115

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.... is an appeal, the next year, The assessee is a registered company with limited liability and carries on business with its headquarters at Madras, which includes the manufacture and supply of bus-bodies. The disputed turnover in both the cases covers the supply of bus-bodies to the State Government under contracts entered into with them in the usual form of tender notice, offer and acceptance. The department as well as the Tribunal proceeded on the basis that the contracts, read as a whole, amounted to sale of bus-bodies as finished units made according to specifications in terms of the contracts and mounted on chassis supplied by the Government. That view is vigorously contested before us. For this purpose, our attention is invited to t....

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.... Government and collected by their representative ex-works spot. The offer also mentioned that, on account of certain reasons, the rate offered was slightly higher than the rate at which it had executed prior contracts with the Government. The specifications attached to the offer recited that the contract was "for building and mounting all-steel city type bus-body on Mercedes Benz 190" W.B. forward control chassis for the Government Transport, Madras". Various other details were given. The Government accepted the offer and stated through the honorary Director of Government Transport, Madras: "I am to inform you that it has been decided to entrust to you 50 (fifty) Mercedes Benz chassis for building steel-aluminium type bodies at a cost of R....

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....rom the relative contract. The main problem, therefore, is one of ascertainment of the intention of the contract, and for that purpose one must have regard not merely to the particular terms expressed in various parts of the agreement, but the contract read as a whole. Where it is a case of movable property, the ascertainment of the intention of the parties from contracts is not as easy as in other cases involving structural works on immovable property. We do not think it necessary or desirable to formulate tests for universal application to every situation. In the nature of things, each contract has to be looked at on its own to decide the question. Reading the contract here in question as a whole, we are left with the impression that the....

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....een the parties, as far as we are able to see from the contract, is that payment will be made only against completed bus-bodies mounted on the chassis. The act that the parties have agreed that the contractor should mount the bodies on the chassis is not inconsistent with sale of bus-bodies as chattels. In the nature of things, such mounting appears to be part of the bargain for sale and will, in our opinion, make no difference to the character of the transaction as a sale of goods. We are reminded for the assessee that this is not a case where the bus-bodies are separately constructed and thereafter they are mounted on chassis, but the bus-bodies themselves are constructed on the chassis from the start, by fitting into it piece by piece. T....