Case: Collector of Central Excise  Vs. New Tobacco Co. and Ors.

affected by the prohibition are in a position to observe the law or to promote the observance of the law. The said observation was made by this Court in the context of mens rea being a necessary ingredient of the offence. In that very case this Court has observed that individual service of a general notification on every member of the public is not necessary and all that the subordinate law making authority can or need do, would be to publish it in such a manner that persons can, if they are interested, acquaint themselves with its contents. 7. In State of Madhya Pradesh vs. Ram Ragubir Prasad Agarwal AIR 1979 SC 888 , while interpreting the word publish in s. 3(2) of MP Prathamik, Middle School Tatha Madhyamik Shiksha (Pathya Pustakon Sambandhi Vyavastha) Adhiniyam, this Court observed that in our view, the purpose of s. 3 animates the meaning of the expression publish. Publication is the act of publishing anything; offering it to public notice, or rendering it accessible to public scrutiny ... an advising of the public; a making known of something to them for a purpose. Logomachic exercises need not detain us because the obvious legislative object is to ensure that when the Board lays down the syllabi it must publish the same so that when the stage of prescribing text-books according to such syllabi arrives, both the publishers and the State Government and even the educationists among the public may have some precise conception about the relevant syllabi to enable Government to decide upon suitable text-books from the private market or compiled under s. 5 by the State Government itself. In our view, therefore, publication to the educational world is the connotation of the expression. Even the student and the teaching community may have to know what the relevant syllabus for a subject is, which means wider publicity than minimal communication to the departmental officialdom. 8. Following this judgment Madras High Court in Asia Tobacco Co. Ltd. vs. Union of India [1985]155ITR568(Mad) , held that in such cases the effective date is the date of knowledge and not the date of the official Gazette. The relevant observation made in paragraph 4 of the said judgment are as under : The mere printing of the official Gazette containing the relevant notification and without making the same available for circulation and putting it on sale to the public will not amount to the notification within the meaning of r. 8(1) of the Rules. The intendment of the notification in the official Gazette is that in the case of either grant or withdrawal of exemption the public must come to know of the same. Notify even according to ordinary dictionary meaning would be to take note of, observe; to make known, publish, proclaim; to announce; to give notice to; to inform. It would be a mockery of the rule to state that it would suffice the purpose of the notification if the notification is merely printed in the Official Gazette, without making the same available for circulation to the public or putting it on sale to the public ...... Neither the date of the notification nor the date of printing, nor the date of Gazette counts for notification within the meaning of the rule, but only the date when the public gets notified in the sense, the concerned Gazette is made available to the public. The date of release of the publication is the decisive date to make the notification effective. Printing of the official Gazette and stacking them without releasing to the public would not amount to notification at all ...... The respondents are taking up a stand that the petitioner is expected to be aware of the Withdrawal Notification and that the words publish in official Gazette and the words put up for sale to public are not synonymous and offering for sale to publish is a subsequent step which cannot be imported into the Act, and the respondents are expressing similar stands. They could not be of any avail at all to the respondents to get out of the legal implications flowing from want of due notification, as exemplified above. Printing the notification in the official Gazette, without making it available for circulation to the concerned public, or placing it for sale to the said public, would certainly not satisfy the idea of notification in the legal sense. The same view was taken by the Bombay High Court in GTC Industries Ltd. vs. Union of India 1987 (13) ECR 1161 and by Delhi High Court in Universal Cans and Containers vs. Union of India 1993 (10) ELT 23 (Del). 9. The following observations made in the case of B. K. Srinivasan & Ors. vs. State of Karnataka [1987]1SCR1054 , also support the view that we are taking : Whether law is viewed from the standpoint of the conscientious good man seeking to abide by the law or from the standpoint of Justice Holmess unconscientious bad man seeking to avoid the law, law must be known, that is to say, it must be so made it can be known. 10. Our attention was also drawn to the decisions of this Court in Pankaj Jain Agencies vs. Union of India & Ors. 1994ECR28(SC) and ITC Ltd. vs. Collector of Central Excise, Bombay 1996(86)ELT477(SC) but they are not helpful in deciding the question that arises in these cases. 11. We hold that a Central Excise Notification can be said to have been published, except when it is provided otherwise, when it is so issued as to make it known to the public. It would be a proper publication if it is published in such a manner that persons can, if they are so interested, acquaint themselves with its contents. If publication is through a Gazette then mere printing of it in the Gazette would not be enough. Unless the Gazette containing the notification is made available to the public, the notification cannot be said to have been duly published.

Decision (1 = appeal accepted, 0 = rejected): 1

Explanation:
1[ds]4. Sec. 38 of the act provides that all the rules made and notifications issued under the act shall be published in the official Gazette. So, the requirement of s. 38 is publication of the rules and the notifications in the official Gazette. The dictionary meaning of the word publish as given in Websters Comprehensive Dictionary, International Edition, is (1) To make known or announce publicly; promulgate; proclaim. (2) To print and issue to the public. (3) To communicate to a third person. According to the Legal Glossary, published by the Legislative Department, Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Government of India in 1992, it means to make generally accessible or available; to place before or offer to public; to bring before the public for sale or distribution. Thus the word publish connotes not only an act of printing but also further action of issuing or making it available to the publiEven if we go by the dictionary meaning, the requirement of publishing the notifications would connote that what is intended to give notice or information to the public can be treated as published only when it is made available to the public so that they can know about it. The requirement of publishing the notifications in the official Gazette, which is an official journal or a newspaper containing public notices and other prescribed matters, also indicates that the word publish in s. 38 should be so interpreted.9. The following observations made in the case of B. K. Srinivasan & Ors. vs. State of Karnataka [1987]1SCR1054 , also support the view that we are taking :Whether law is viewed from the standpoint of the conscientious good man seeking to abide by the law or from the standpoint of Justice Holmess unconscientious bad man seeking to avoid the law, law must be known, that is to say, it must be so made it can be known.10. Our attention was also drawn to the decisions of this Court in Pankaj Jain Agencies vs. Union of India & Ors. 1994ECR28(SC) and ITC Ltd. vs. Collector of Central Excise, Bombay 1996(86)ELT477(SC) but they are not helpful in deciding the question that arises in these cases.11. We hold that a Central Excise Notification can be said to have been published, except when it is provided otherwise, when it is so issued as to make it known to the public. It would be a proper publication if it is published in such a manner that persons can, if they are so interested, acquaint themselves with its contents. If publication is through a Gazette then mere printing of it in the Gazette would not be enough. Unless the Gazette containing the notification is made available to the public, the notification cannot be said to have been duly published.