The judgment of the court was delivered by

RAGHAVAN, C.J. - These revision cases are against a common order passed by the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal in two cases relating to two different assessment years. The State is the petitioner in both the cases, and the common assessee the respondent. The questions involved are also the same.

The assessee is a wholesale dealer in rationed foodgrains like rice and wheat and also a dealer in groceries including coriander and methi. He claimed total exemption from tax on his turnover of sales of controlled rationed foodgrains, which claim the Sales Tax Officer and the Appellate Assistant Commissioner rejected, but, on appeal, was allowed by the Tribunal. He had also a contention that the wheat sold by him came within the Notification S.R.O. No. 602/63 dated 24th April, 1963, published in the official Gazette on 2nd June, 1963. This contention was also accepted by the Tribunal. Yet another contention the assessee had was that coriander and methi were oil-seeds coming within section 14(vi) of the Central Sales Tax Act. This again was accepted by the Tribunal, which held that the assessee need not pay tax on the sales of coriander and methi. There were other contentions too like that the sales of wheat attempted to be taxed were not first sales within the State and that the containers were not taxable. These questions, however, were not considered by the Tribunal, since the conclusions on the other questions made a decision on these issues unnecessary. What we have to consider is whether the decisions of the Tribunal on the three questions mentioned above are correct.

The main question is the first question, namely, whether the sales of the rationed articles by the assessee to the retailers were sales coming within the General Sales Tax Act. There was an earlier Division Bench ruling of this Court, to which one of us was a party, in R. P. Govindan & Co. v. Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal ([1970] K.L.T. 136; p. 188 infra), where the question considered was whether such sales of rationed articles to the retailers by a wholesaler were sales. And the Division Bench answered the question in the affirmative. When judgment was being pronounced in that case, the Full Bench ruling of the Allahabad High Court in Commissioner of Sales Tax, U.P., Lucknow v. Ram Bilas Ram Gopal ([1969] 24 S.T.C. 508) was brought to the notice of the Division Bench; and the Division Bench observed that the reasoning in that decision was almost on the same lines as the reasoning the Division Bench adopted in the case before it. Thereafter, the decision of the Supreme Court in Chittar Mal Narain Das v. Commissioner of Sales Tax, U.P. ([1970] 26 S.T.C. 344 (S.C.)) came. That was a decision reversing a decision of the Allahabad High Court, where the learned Judges followed their own earlier Full Bench decision in Ram Bilas Ram Gopal's case ([1969] 24 S.T.C. 508), which was referred to by our Division Bench in the decision already mentioned. As indicated already, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Allahabad High Court; and the Tribunal appears to have thought that the said decision of the Supreme Court had the effect of overruling the reasoning of the Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court referred to by us in our Division Bench ruling. And the Tribunal came to the conclusion that our Division Bench ruling was also impliedly overruled by the decision of the Supreme Court in Chittar Mal Narain Das's case ([1970] 26 S.T.C. 344 (S.C.)).

The relevant passage from the judgment of the Supreme Court, namely, the judgment of Shah, J., was extracted by the Tribunal. Still, the Tribunal has failed to understand the significance of the passage extracted; for instance, the crucial sentence in the passage is :

"In our judgment clause 3 sets up a machinery for compulsory acquisition by the State Government of stocks of wheat belonging to the licensed dealers."

This is proof positive that the finding of the Supreme Court i