Judgment

Syed Shah Mohammed Quadri, J.—Leave is granted in the special leave petitions.

2. The solution to the questions raised in this batch of cases turns on a true interpretation of the provisions of the Haryana General Sales Tax, 1973 (for short, "the Haryana Act")/ the Punjab General Sales Tax Act, 1948 (for short, "the Punjab Act") in the light of the provisions of Article 286 of the Constitution and the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 (for short, "the CST Act") .

3.  For the sake of convenience, these cases can be divided into two groups. (A) The first consists of two categories of cases arising under the Haryana Act in respect of assessments for the period : (i) ending with October 14, 1990 and (ii) between October 15, 1990 and September 28, 1996; and (B) The second takes in cases arising under the Punjab Act.

4. Mr. P. Chidambaram, the learned senior counsel appearing for the appellants, has piloted the arguments in the batch, which were adopted by other learned counsel appearing for the appellants in different appeals/writ petitions. The contentions of the learned counsel are two fold. The first being, Section 9 of the Haryana Act imposes charge of purchase tax on paddy and cla