JUDGMENT

Dalveer Bhandari, J.—A short question involved in these appeals is whether the process undertaken by the appellants for bringing into existence the resultant Stepped Transmission Poles amounts to manufacture under the provisions of the Section 2(f) of the Central Excises Act, 1944.

2. Section 2(f) of the said Act reads as under :

“Manufacture” includes any process—

(i)incidental or ancillary to the completion of a manufactured product;

(ii)which is specified in relation to any goods in the section or Chapter notes of [The First Schedule] to the Central Excise Tariff Act, 1985 (5 of 1986) as amounting to [manufacture; or]

3. The word “manufacture” is a compound word of Latin origin derived from the words “manu,” by hand and “facere,” to do, to make, to form; but the meaning is not confined to that which is done by hand alone, but by machinery as well. (In re Tecopa Min. Etc., Co. 110 Fed 120, 121.)

4. The following passage in the Permanent Edition of Words and phrases was referred to with approval in Delhi Cloth and General Mills AIR 1963 SC 791 at page 795 :

‘Manufacture’ implies a change, but every change is not manufacture and yet every change of an article is the result of trea