Case: Commissioner Of Sales Tax, Madhya Pradesh Vs. Jaswant Singh Charan Singh

1. The appellant has been carrying on business and is a dealer in firewood and charcoal. For the period from March 29, 1962 to April 29, 1962, he was assessed to sales tax under S.18(6) ofthe Madhya Pradesh General Sales Tax Act, 1958 as he did not have any registration certificate in respect of this period. The Additional Sales Tax Officer, Ujjain, and the Additional Appellate Assistant Commissioner, Indore, both held that charcoal in which the appellant was dealing was not covered by Entry I of Part III of Sch. II to the Act, but that it fell under the residuary Entry I of Part VI of that Schedule; and consequently was liable to be assessed at the rate of 4 per cent of the price of charcoal. In a further appeal before the Board of Revenue, the Board, relying on the dictionary meaning of the word coal as given in Blackies Concise Dictionary, held that charcoal would be included in the term coal, and, therefore, Entry I in Part III of Sch. II would apply and the tax chargeable would be at 2 per cent only. At the instance of the Commissioner of Sales Tax, the Board referred the following question to the Highcharcoal is covered under Entry I of Part III of Sch. II to the M. P. General Sales Tax Act, 1958, and is taxable at the rate of 2 per cent or will be taxable at the rate of 4 per cent under Entry I of Part VI of Sch. II to the M. P. General Sales Tax Act,High Court held that while construing entries in a statute like the Sales Tax Acts, the Court should prefer the popular meaning of the terms used in such entries and not their dictionary meanings and that so construed charcoal would be included in the word coal. Consequently, it answered the question in favour of the respondent. According to the High Court, charcoal would be covered by Entry I of Part III of Sch. II and was taxable at 2 per cent. Hence this appeal by special leave.

Court's reasoning:
3. According to these Dictionaries coal would appear to include charcoal.The contention of the respondent was that charcoal is one of the species of coal, and, therefore, would be covered by Entry I of Part III,and, therefore, the answer given by the High Court is correct.Now, there can be no dispute that while coal is technically understood as a mineral product, charcoal is manufactured by human agency from products like wood and other things. But it is now well-settled that while interpreting items in statutes like the Sales Tax Acts, resort should be had not to the scientific or the technical meaning of such terms but to their popular meaning or the meaning attached to them by those dealing in them, that is to say, to their commercial sense.The result emerging from these decisions is that while construing the word coal in Entry I of Part III of Sch. II, the test that would be applied is what would be the meaning which persons dealing with coal and consumers purchasing it as fuel would give to that word. A sales tax statute is being one levying a tax on goods must in the absence of a technical term or a term of science or art, be presumed to have used an ordinary term as coal according to the meaning ascribed to it in common parlance. Viewed from that angle both a merchant dealing in coal and a consumer wanting to purchase it would regard coal not in its geological sense but in the sense as ordinarily understood and would include "charcoal" in the term coal. It is only when the question of the kind or variety of coal would arise that a distinction would be made between coal and charcoal; otherwise, both of them would in ordinary parlance as also in their commercial sense be spoken astaxed coal and firewood at 2 per cent it does not appear to be possible that the Legislature deliberately left out charcoal from the connotation of the word coal and left it to be charged at 4 per cent under the residuary Entry I in Part VI. The object of the Legislature clearly was to tax coal and firewood as articles used as fuel and did not make a separate entry in regard to charcoal as it must be aware that coal is understood in ordinary and commercial sense would include charcoal. Had that not been so, instead of leaving it to be dealt with under the residuary item, it would have enacted a separate entry just as it did in the case of firewood which it knew would not in its ordinary meaning fall under the term coal. In this view, the contention of counsel for the State must beColliery Control Order deals with collieries and obviously, therefore, the term coal there is used as a mineral product. It is a well-settled principle that in construing a word in an Act caution is necessary in adopting a meaning ascribed to that word in otherstrict sense in which such a word is to be found in another statute may mean the etymological or scientific sense and would not in the context of another statute be applicable. From the Colliery Control Order, 1945 or the other provisions to which our attention was drawn to, it would neither be possible nor safe to adopt the meaning of the word coal given in those provisions for the purposes of the Act under construction. Nor can we infer that there is a Legislative policy consistently followed by the Legislature merely because the word coal has been used as meaning a mineral product in the context of these statutes. It would not, therefore, be possible to discard the meaning of the word coal in this statute as understood in its commercial or popular sense and to adopt its connotation from other statutes passed for different purposes or in context of different objects.9. We agree with the meaning of the word coal given by the High Court and hold that charcoal would be taxable at the rate of 2 per cent only.