1986 (5) TMI 257

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....tion published by the Government of Kerala under section 10 of the Act "fresh fish" is exempted from tax liability (vide item No. 23 in Schedule I of Notification S.R.O. No. 342/63). 2.. For the assessment year 1975-76 the Sales Tax Officer, III Circle, Quilon, upheld the petitioner's claim for exemption of turnover for the sale of cuttlefish. But subsequently the same officer initiated proceedings under section 19 of the Act to redetermine the turnover of the petitioner, since he felt that the exemption was wrongly granted. As per his order dated 28th February, 1980, the Sales Tax Officer assessed the petitioner to sales tax for the turnover of the sale of cuttlefish, since the officer took the view that cuttlefish is not fish. The o....

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....nces. But the learned counsel for the petitioner contended that dictionary meaning should not be resorted to for the purpose of ascertaining the true import of the items of articles catalogued in taxing statutes. Such items, according to the learned counsel, should be understood only by the popular connotation or in commercial sense. In support of the above contention the learned counsel cited the Full Bench decision of the Kerala High Court in Krishna Iyer v. State of Kerala [1962] 13 STC 838. The word "vegetables" in item No. 27 of Schedule I to the General Sales Tax Act, 1125, was the subject-matter of discussion in the said decision. Their Lordships stated that: "It is not the dictionary meaning of a term that will invariably prevail....

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....no evidence to show that the term concerned has a particular popular connotation. In such cases it is for the party, who seeks to attach a particular meaning to the term involved, to give evidence in support of it. In the absence of such evidence, the course open to the court is to resort to dictionaries and lexicons. We are fortified in this by the observation of a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court in Commissioner of Sales Tax v. Tejco Industries [1976] 38 STC 93. "The meaning of the terms describing goods in the entries in the Schedules to the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1959, prescribing rates at which commercial articles have to be taxed has to be gathered from the trade parlance or the common parlance in trade. The question as to what ....