S.S.Sandhawalia, J.

1. Whether cut tobacco in the continuous manufacturing process of factory made cigarettes "is also independently leviable to excise duty as "smoking mixture for pipes and cigarettes" under tariff item 4, category II Clause (iv) of Schedule I of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944, is the legally significant and equally the financially important question for tobacco trade in this reference to the Division Bench.

2. Despite the volume of pleadings on either side, it should suffice to advert to the salient facts to zero in on the focal point at issue. Writ petitioner No. 1 Messrs India Tobacco Company Limited, are engaged, inter alia, in the business of the manufacture and sale of machine-made cigarettes and also of smoking mixture in their factory at Munger and they own four other factories in the States of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka in the financial year of 1982 the company had paid more than 350 crores as Central Excise Duty. It has been averred that the petitioner-company manufacture two distinctly different categories of tobacco products from unmanufactured tobacco, namely, factory-made cigarettes on the one hand and smoking mixture for pipes and hand