JUDGMENT

B.P. Jeevan Reddy, J.-Leave granted.

2. Ashok Leyland Limited, the appellant herein,* is one of the major manufacturers of trucks and other motor vehicles in India. Its registered office is at Madras (Chennai). The plants manufacturing trucks and motor vehicles are situated in the State of Tamil Nadu as well as in other States. The trucks and vehicles manufactured by it are sold all over the country. For its business purposes, it maintains Regional Sales Offices (R.S.Os.) in different parts of the country like, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Vijayawada, Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Calcutta, Bhuvaneshwar, Gauhati, Pondicherry and so on. The appellant says that each of these R.S.Os. maintains an office, a stock yard and other necessary paraphernalia for receiving , stocking, repairing and delivering motor vehicles to their customers. The appellant says that almost seventy percent of its sales are to parties other than State Transport Undertakings (S.T.Us.). The sales to S.T.Us. are in the region of thirty percent of its production. The R.S.Os., the appellant says, contact the local purchasers and the S.T.Us., book the orders and also deliver the vehicles to them pursuant to sales