1999 (2) TMI 656

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....onsolidate and amend the laws relating to the levy of tax on the sale or purchase of goods in the State of Assam. All sales or purchase of goods other than those goods specified in Schedule I to the Act, 1993 are made taxable under the provisions of the Act. By section 9 of the Act 1993, subject to the conditions and exceptions, if any, set out in Schedule I to the Act, 1993 the sales of goods specified therein are exempted from tax. Schedule I to the Act, 1993 contains the list of exempted items and "vegetables" is one of the items in the said list as cited at serial No. 39, which reads as follows: "......................... 39.. Vegetables (but not onion, garlic, spices, Except when sold as cooked ginger and condiments) food."   The petitioner contends that ginger is a "root vegetable" like potato and radish and, therefore, the question of excluding ginger from the purview of the exempted goods, is per se arbitrary. The constitutional scheme is for protection of the socially and economically backward classes and the new measure to include ginger as a taxable commodity shall seriously affect the Kuki tribe of the Karbi Anglong district.   3.. Mr. N.N. Saikia,....

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.... ginger and condiments and this discretion exercised by the Legislature in the absence of avowed arbitrariness, is not to be intervened. 5.. Admittedly, the State Legislature under entry No. 54 of List II of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution is authorised to legislate with respect to taxation on sale or purchase of goods. The tax on sale of ginger can be levied in conformity with the constitutional provisions. The legislative competence is never in question. The power to legislate is given by article 246 of the Constitution. The three Lists of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution are legislative heads or fields of legislation by the Union or State or by both. By the Act, 1993, the State Legislature while exempting vegetables from taxation consciously did not exempt ginger, onion, garlic, spices and condiments though it might have excluded those from the purview of taxation earlier. The Legislature has the freedom to legislate within the respective fields as allotted under the various Lists under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution. There is a permissible area of discretion on the Legislature-more so in respect of taxing legislation ; so much so that it is alwa....

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....sons or objects which will be taxed and the statute is not open to attack on the mere ground that it taxes some persons or objects and not others. It is only when within the range of its selection the law operates unequally and cannot be justified on the basis of a valid classification that there would be a violation of article 14."   In Hira Lal Rattan Lal [1973] 31 STC 178 (relevant pages 185 and 186); (1973) 1 SCC 216 (relevant pages 222 and 223, paras 14, 17 and 20), the Supreme Court observed:   "............It is open to the Legislature to define the nature of the goods, the sale or purchase of which should be brought to tax. Legislature was not incompetent to separate the processed or split pulses from the unsplit or unprocessed pulses and treat the two as separate and independent goods. ...........But the Legislature has wide powers of classification in the case of taxing statutes. .........The classification between the processed or split pulses and unprocessed or unsplit pulses is a reasonable classification. It is based on the use to which those goods can be put. Hence, in our opinion, the impugned classification is not violative of article 14." ....

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....utside the State of Assam, it would be open to the aggrieved persons to take up the plea before the taxing authority and that cannot be a ground for condemning the legislative process. 7.. The decisions reported in Krishna Iyer v. State of Kerala [1962] 13 STC 838 (Ker) [FB] and [1977] 39 STC 378 (SC) (State of West Bengal v. Washi Ahmed), are decisions on facts and are not applicable in the fact-situation of the case in hand. In the Act, 1993, the Legislature exempted "vegetables", but specifically excluded garlic, ginger, spices, onion and condiments from the list of goods sale or purchase of which is/are exempted from taxation. In the aforesaid two cases, exemption was in respect of "vegetables". In the case of State of West Bengal v. Washi Ahmed reported in [1977] 39 STC 378, the Supreme Court had the occasion to deal with a similar question wherein sales tax was levied by the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941 on the taxable turnover of a dealer computed in accordance with the provisions of the aforesaid Act. Sub-section (1) of section 6 of the aforesaid Act, 1941 provided that no tax was payable under the Act on sale of goods specified in the first column of Schedule I, ....