TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1978 (8) TMI 224
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....opment') Act. 1957. The definition is as follows: "Minor mineral' means building stones, gravel? ordinary clay, ordinary sand other than sand used for prescribed purposes, and any other mineral which the Central Government may, by Notification in the official Gazette declare to be minor mineral ;" In exercise of the power conferred by Section 3(e) of the Act, the Central Government declared the following minerals to be minor minerals "Boulder, Shingle, Chalcedony pebbles used for ball mill purposes only, limeshell kanker and limestone used for lime burning, murrum, brick-earth, fuller's earth, bentonite road metal, reh-matti, slate and shale when used for building material;" The submission of the learned Counsel for....
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....tain- . ed from underneath the surface of the earth by digging or quarrying. But this is not always so as pointed out by Chandrachud, J (as he then was) in Bhagwan Dass v. State of Uttar Pradesh,( [1976] 3 S.C.R. 869.) where the learned judge said (at p. 874): It was urged that the sand and gravel are deposited on the surface of the land and not under the surface of the soil and therefore they cannot be called minerals and equally so, any operation by which they are collected or gathered cannot properly be called a minerals operation. It is in the first place wrong to assume that mines and minerals must always be sub-soil and that there can be no minerals on the surface of the earth. Such an assumption is contrary to informed experience. I....
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....pplication as to destroy at once half the value of the exception. Equally subversive of the grant would be the definition of minerals found in the Century Dictionary: as "any constituent of the earth's crust" ; and that of Beinbridge on Mines: "All the Substances stances that now form, or which once formed, a part of the solid body of the earth". Nor do we approximate much more closely to the meaning of the word by treating minerals as substances which are ""mined"" as distinguished from those are "quarried", since many valuable deposits of gold, copper, iron, and coal lie upon or near the surface of the earth, and some of the most valuable building stone, such for instance, as the Caen ston....
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....e original owner whose land had been taken would be entitled to dig and take away the clay from the land on which the Railway was constructed, thus defeating the very object of the compulsory taking. On the other hand, as noticed by the Supreme Court of the United States, in several English cases clay, gravel, sand, stone etc. has been held to be minerals. That is why we say the word mineral has no definite meaning but has a variety of meanings, depending on the context of its use. In the context of the Mines and Minerals (Regulation & Development) Act, we have no' doubt that the word 'mineral' is of sufficient amplitude to include 'brick-earth'. As already observed y us, if the expression 'minor mineral' as defined in the Act includes 'ord....