The process of quarrying and breaking boulders into stone constitutes 'manufacture' within the meaning of the Sales Tax Act, 1947 (M. P. ).

( 1 ) THIS is a reference under Section 23 (1) of the Madhya Pradesh Sales-tax Act by the Board of Revenue. The following questions have been referred for the opinion of this Court:

(1) Whether the quarrying and breaking of boulders into stone is manufacture within the meaning of Section 2 (i) (a) of the Act? (2) Whether on the facts of the case the transactions are taxable sales within the meaning of Section 2 (a) of the Act?'

( 2 ) FOR the purposes of answering these Questions a few facts have to be narrated. The assessee is one G. R. Kulkarni. He is a railway contractor, who takes on contracts the digging and preparing of gitti (metal) and collecting it at the railway sidings according to his contracts and who sells this metal for constructions of roads and as ballast etc. The short question, therefore, is whether the breaking of boulders into metal (gitti) is a process of manufacture.

( 3 ) WE may mention that the case arose before the passing of Act 20 of 1953, which introduced a section defining 'manufacture'. That definition says that manufacture includes any process or manner of producing, preparing or making any goods. In our opinion, even without this definition the word 'manufacture' in relation to other parts of this Act would bear the identical meaning. The definition does nothing more than clear the ground, so that no dispute may hereafter exist. Now, the gist of the matter in this case is that according to the definition of 'taxable quantum' the present assessee would be liable to pay a tax on a turnover of Rs. 5,000/- if he was himself manufacturing or producing any goods for the purposes of sale: (See the definition of 'taxable quantum' in Section 2 (i) (a) of the Sales-tax Act.)The contention of the assessee is that he was neither manufacturing nor producing any goods for the purposes of sale. He contends that breaking boulders into gitti is not a manufacturing process and that gittis are not 'produced' within the meaning given to it by the definition. He relies upon -- 'north Bengal Stores, Ltd. v. Board of Revenue, Bengal', 1950-1 STC 157 (A); and -- 'state of Bihar v. Chrestian Mica industries Ltd. , 1956-7 STC 626: (AIR 1957 Pat 184 (B ). On the other side reference is made to --'state of Madhya Pradesh v. Wasudeo', 1955-6 STC 30 (C),

( 4 ) IT is obvious enough that the process of manufacture from one article to another changes and there are no many different processes in existence that to take the analogy of any single manufacturing process is likely to cause confusion. It is better therefore to apply one's mind to the exact process employed by which one article is shaped into another and to see whether the purposes of the Act are satisfied. Now, in the present case the act of quarrying results in the accumulation or extraction of a large heap of big stones. Those stones may well be marketable, and if they are sold the process would be not one of manufacture but one of quarrying. After that stage is reached and the person who has won the stones attempts to break them, may be by manual labour, into sizeable stones for sale as gitti, he is shaping the stone into an object of a different size. Now, the word 'manufacture' has not various shades of meaning. There may be manufacture of a complicated object like the super-constellation, or there might be manufacture of a simple object like a toy kite. In the Calcutta case which is reported in 1950-1 STC 157 (A), a mixture compounded by an apothecary from medicines was said to be 'manufactured' by him. The essence of manufacture is the changing of one object into another for the purposes of making it marketable. The stones which are won in the process of quarrying may be sold without fashioning them into something else. If they are so sold they would not be manufactured but merely delivered from the quarry-head. When they are broken into metal or gitti there is some process, manual though it may be, for the purpose of shaping the stones into another marketable comm

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