1979 (11) TMI 229

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....ven in Tamil) and there were other ropes required by agriculturists. The assessing authority considered that these items did not fall within item 4 of the Third Schedule as goods exempted from tax by section 8 of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner confirmed the assessment as made by him. The assessee took the matter on appeal to the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal. The Tribunal, after elaborately considering the several decisions cited before it, came to the conclusion that it is difficult to conceive of a textile shop selling rope or a person doing business of the type of the assessee selling any commonly accepted textile article like cloth in his shop just because he sells ropes. In other words, it pro....

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....ssion. As rightly pointed out by the Tribunal, one does not go to the textile shop for the purpose of getting this kind of yarn, nor does one go to the assessee's shop for getting textile. The two varieties of goods are so wholly different that both cannot be grouped under "textiles" which would have to be understood in the ordinary and accepted commercial sense. The Supreme Court in a recent decision, Porritts & Spencer (Asia) Ltd. v. State of Haryana[1978] 42 S.T.C. 433 (S.C.). , pointed out that the word "textile" must be interpreted according to its popular sense, meaning that sense which people conversant with the subject-matter with which the statute is dealing would attribute to it. Their Lordships referred to the Customs Tarif....

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....it is not possible to classify the present ropes with which we are concerned as yarn. Though the ropes are made of yarn, still they have undergone a transmutation into a different commercial commodity. A common man or a merchant would not call the rope "yarn". The type of ropes used for tying cattle or for passing through their nose or for being used as whips cannot be classified as yarn, so as to fall within the above-mentioned item. In Muthusavari Pillai & Sons v. State of Tamil Nadu[1977] 39 S.T.C. 359 at 365., this Court had to go into the question whether cotton yarn twisted into bandings and similar ropes could be classified as "textile" or "yarn". In the course of the judgment, it was pointed out at page 365 after referring to the....