Dy Commissioner of Sales Tax vs S.K. Swaminathan Achary

Paripoornan, J.—The Revenue is the petitioner. We are concerned with the assessment year 1984 - 85. The respondent is an assessee to sales tax. The respondent is a dealer in silver ornaments, silverwares, etc. The assessing Authority brought to tax the turnover relating to silver vessels and wares under entry 121 of the First Schedule of the Kerala General Sales Tax Act (in short, the Act) at 8%. In appeal the Appellate Assistant Commissioner bifurcated the sales turnover into two-one sales turnover relating to silver vessels, and the other sales turnover relating to silver ornaments.'' The turnover of sales of silver vessels was brought to tax at 8% under entry 121 of the 1st Schedule of the Act. The silver ornaments were brought to tax at 5%. The plea of the assessee was that silver vessels should be treated as jewellery and should be taxed only as silver ornaments at 5% and "silver vessels" are also covered by entry 162, which is to the following effect:

Goods in respect of which single point tax is leviable under sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of section 5.

Sl. No.

Description of goods.

Point of levy.

Hate of tax.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

XX

XX

xx

162.

Jewellery of gold, silver and platinum group metals.

At the point of first sale in the State by a dealer who is liable to tax u/s 5.

(5)

This plea was negatived by the Sales Tax Officer. In appeal, the Appellate Tribunal accepted the said plea and held that silver vessels and wares are, in fact, jewellery of silver as specified in item 162 of the 1st Schedule of the Act. Thereafter, the Revenue has filed this revision assailing the decision of the Appellate Tribunal that silver vessels and wares will come under Entry 162 of the Ist Schedule to the Apt and should be taxed only at 5%. We heard counsel for the Revenue, Mr. L. Gopalakrishnan Poti as also counsel for the assessee. Counsel for the Revenue argued that silver vessels and wares can never be considered to be jewellery of silver either in common parlance or in the commercial world. We see force in this plea. The meaning of the word "jewellery'''' in ''New Webster''s Dictionary of the English Language'' is as follows:

Jewels; articles made of gold; silver precious stones, or similar materials for personal ornament.

In P. Ramanatha Aiyar''s The Law Lexicon'', Reprint Edition 1987, at page 635, the word ''jewellery'' has been defined as follows:

The word ''jewelry'' is generally used as including articles of personal adornment, and the word further imports that the articles are of value in the community where they are used. A belt of cowry shells, a necklace of bears'' claws, a head ornament of sharks'' teeth though possessing no value in themselves; are esteemed valuable in the communities where they are worn;

Articles manufactured from those for the purpose of personal adornment are known as articles of jewelry.

In the light of the above meaning to the word ''jewellery'', we have no doubt that the silver vessels and wares sold by the respondent-assessee will not be covered by entry No. 162 of the 1st Schedule to the Act. The decision on that score by the Appellate Tribunal is erroneous in law. We set aside the decision of the Appellate Tribunal, dated 31-10-1986 in T.A. No 722 of 1986 to that extent and restore the decision of the Appellate Assistant Commissioner

The Tax Revision Case is allowed to the above extent.