2025 (3) TMI 848

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....finition of 'service' under Section 65B(44) of the Finance Act, 1994 the Act along the interest and the benefit of cum tax benefit under Section 67 (2) of the Act. 2. The appellant is engaged in Chilling of Milk for M/s. Sriganganagar Zila Dugdh Utpadak Sahakari Sangh Ltd. SZDUS . The appellant is also providing the services of renting of godowns to SZDUS under the purview of taxable service namely, 'Renting of Immovable Property Service', defined under Section 65(19a) and taxable under Section 65 (105) (zzzz) of the Act. The appellant was found to be liable to discharge the service tax on the gross amount received towards chilling charges (including fuel, power and electricity charges) and rent under the taxable Services BAS and renting....

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....ax, w.e.f. 01.07.2012, the appellant has preferred the present appeal. 3. Heard Ms. J. Kainaat, learned Advocate for the appellant and Shri Manoj Kumar, learned Authorized Representative for the revenue and perused the record of the case. 4. At the outset, learned counsel submitted that the appellant is not contesting duty amount confirmed in respect of godown rent under Renting of Immovable Property. The submissions made by the learned counsel for the appellant are therefore limited to the levy of service tax for the period after 30.06.2012 on services of chilling of milk. She submitted that since 01.07.2012 the structure of service tax was changed with the introduction of negative list and therefore she relied on the provisions of S....

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.... 66D. The negative list shall comprise of the following services, namely:- (d) service relating to agriculture or agricultural produce by way of - (iii) processes carried out at an agricultural farm including tending, pruning, cutting, harvesting, drying, cleaning, trimming, sun drying, fumigating, curing, sorting, grading, cooling or bulk packaging and such like operations which do not alter the essential characteristics of agricultural produce but make it only marketable for the primary market; The Act defines "agriculture" and "agricultural produce' in Section 65B (3) & (5), which reads as under : "(3) "agriculture" means the cultivation of plants and rearing of all life-forms of animals, except the rearing....

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....st are only related to agricultural activities and cannot embrace within it the activity of chilling milk. 10. The reliance placed by the learned counsel on the Notification No. 11/2017, we find that the same has been issued under the provisions of the Central Goods and Service Tax Act, 2017. Reference made to Heading 9986 specifically deals with support services to agriculture, forestry, fishing, animal husbandry and therefore the processes carried out has to be read in context thereof and therefore the same is not applicable to the demand made under the provisions of the Finance Act. Even the decision of the Hon'ble Gujarat High Court in Gujarat Cooperative Milk (supra) is also not applicable as the prayer in that case was that milk ch....