RAJAGOPALAN, J.

The petitioner, assessee, is the Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd., with its head office at Jamshedpur and a branch at Madras. The assessee is a registered dealer within the meaning of Section 8-A of the Madras General Sales Tax Act (IX of 1939) (hereinafter referred to as the Act). When the final assessment was made for the assessment year 1947-48 under rule 13(5) of the Turnover and Assessment Rules framed under the Act, the assessee claimed that it was exempt from the payment of sales tax on a turnover of Rs. 52, 59, 112-15-0 on the ground that though goods of that value were sold by the company to the consumers in the taxable territory of Madras, the sale's themselves had been effected at Jamshedpur outside the taxable territory. It as common ground that as the law stood in the assessment year, the turnover of these sales did not fall within the purview of the charging Section 3 of the Act. But it is equally common ground that, though it was eventually established that the sales themselves were not liable to sales tax under the Act, the company had collected from the purchasers in Madras State amounts equivalent to the taxes that would have been payabl