The word "miller" in Item 3 of Schedule IV of the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act, 1957, meant a person engaged in the business of crushing groundnut oil and not a person who merely engaged himself in the business of decorticating groundnuts.

CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.

( 1 ) THE petitioner is a firm carrying on business in the purchase of groundnuts, decorticating of groundnut into kernel and sale of kernel to millers or other dealers or export of outside the State of Andhra Pradesh. The firm owns no equipment for crushing the kernel in top oil and does not engage itself in the business of crushing kernel into oil. During the assessment years 1961-62 and 1962-63 the petitioner was assessed to sales tax on turnovers which included amounts representing the first purchases of groundnuts were sold to millers or other dealers after decorticating. The Commercial Tax Officer included these amounts on the ground that a person working as decorticates is a miller within the meaning of Item 3 of Schedule IV of the Andhra General Sales Tax Act as it stood during that period. Appeals preferred by the petitioner to the Assistant Commissioner were dismissed and thereafter the petitioner instead of preferring appeal to the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal has filed the present application for the issue of writs of certiorari to quash the orders of assessment. The ground alleged for circumventing the procedure of preferring appeals to the Tribunal and preferring revision later to the High Court is that the petitioner was unable to prefer appeals to the Tribunal as he was not in a position to pay the tax demanded from him. We are not quite satisfied with the reason given by the petitioner for not availing himself the remedy prescribed by statute. But nonetheless we have decided to dispose of the Writ Petitions on merits as the Writ petitions were admitted in 1966 and have been pending in this court for four years and there would be no point in dismissing the Writ Petitions after this lapse of time on the ground that the petitioner had an adequate alternate remedy. The IV Schedule to the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act of 1957 contained the description of declared goods in respect of which a single point tax only was livable under Section 6 of the Act and the point at which it was livable. "declared goods" are defined in Section 2 (f) of the Act as meaning goods declared under Section 14 of the Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 to be of special importance in inter-State trade or commerce. The entries in Schedule IV were amended from time to time. The result of the amendments was concerned; for the period from 15-6-1957 to 1-5-1959 groundnuts were exigible to tax at the point of first purchase in the State. For the period from 1-5-1959 to 1-10-1961 they were exigible to tax at the point of last purchase in the State. For the period 1-10-1961 to 1-8-1963 they were exigible to tax when purchased by a miller in the State at the point of purchase by the miller and in all other cases at the point of purchase s by the dealer who buys in the State. The Act and Schedules were further amended in 1963 and the points at which declared goods became exigible to tax were detailed in III Schedule instead of in the IV Schedule. Item No. 6 of the III Schedule dealt with groundnuts and they were exigible to tax "when purchased by a miller other than a decorticating miller in the State, at the point of purchases by such miller and in by the last dealer, who buys in the State. " In the present writ petitions we are concerned with the eligibility of groundnuts to tax during the period 1-10-1961 to 31-3-1963.

( 2 ) SRI S. Dasaratha Rami Reddy, learned counsel for the petitioner submits that miller in item 3 of Schedule IV as it stood between 1-10-1961 and 1-8-1963 meant a miller who engaged himself in the business of crushing groundnut oil and not a person who merely engaged himself in the business of decorticating groundnuts. He submitted that if miller is given a meaning so as to include a person who engaged himself in decorticating only there would at once be an uncertainty as to the point at which tax was livable and there was a possibility of tax being levied at more than one point. That would contravene the prov

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