1971 (3) TMI 90

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....-1960 dated 5th April, 1961?   (2) Whether, under the facts and circumstances of the case, the turnover of the sales of the iron weights and measures from 1st April, 1963, to 31st May, 1963, was taxable at the rate of 3 per cent. or at the rate of 2 per cent. only? The assessee was assessed to sales tax under the U.P. Sales Tax Act on a turnover which included weights and measures. The Sales Tax Officer treated the weights and measures as liable to tax at 3 per cent. and determined the tax liability accordingly. On appeal by the assessee, the Assistant Commissioner (Judicial) Sales Tax did not agree with the view taken by the Sales Tax Officer and held that weights and measures were liable to tax at 2 per cent. only. The State ap....

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....d the view that they could not. In coming to this conclusion the court relied on materials indicating how the expression "hardware" was understood in the commercial world. It observed that every article made of iron or of other base metal could not be regarded as an article of "hardware". In the popular sense, that expression would comprise small articles of base metals, such as iron, copper, aluminium and their alloys like brass etc. The trade journals and catalogues of hardware items, to which the parties referred in that case, indicated that "hardware and mill-stores" were allied trades, that mill-stores consisted of items like small tools and spare parts of machinery and that the hardware trade by itself ordinarily refers to small items....

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....sion referred to commodities belonging to allied trades, that while 'mill-stores' consisted of items such as small tools and spare parts of machinery, 'hardware' referred ordinarily to items made of base metal consisting of building materials such as nuts, bolts, hinges, rivets, latches etc. Upon these considerations, the word 'hardware', we think, cannot refer to kitchen-knives and penknives." In the third case, Kanpur Udyog Bhandar[1970] 26 S.T.C. 431., this court expressed the view that iron buckets also could not be comprehended in the expression "millstores and hardware" and referred in that behalf to what was said in Aftab Husain Imdad Husain[1970] 25 S.T.C. 471. The entire case of the Commissioner of Sales Tax before us is t....