JUDGMENT

Bharucha, J.-For the manufacture of their end products, the appellants bring raw asbestos into the area of the Ranip Nagarpalika, the first respondent. The question is whether they are liable to pay octroi under Entry 70 of Schedule-I of the Gujarat Gram and Nagar Panchayats Taxes and Fees Rules, 1964, as they contend, or under Entry 71 thereof, as the respondents contend. Entry 71 is the general residuary entry. Entry 70, as we have ascertained from the relevant Gazette, reads (precisely) thus :

"Silica, Quartz, Zircon sand, Felspar, Gypsum, Grog Minerals and Oxides used as raw materials."

2. The High Court, being approached by the appellants, dismissed their Writ Petition by the order under challenge. It found that there were disputed questions of fact, as to whether raw asbestos was a mineral and whether grog was a mineral.

3. That raw asbestos is a mineral has been found by this Court in the judgments in Hyderabad Industries Limited v. Union of India1. The only issue that has, therefore, been addressed by learned counsel for the parties is in relation to the Entries aforementioned.

4. The said Entry 70 comprehends (1) Silica, (2) Quartz, (3) Zircon sand, (4) Felspar, (5) Gypsum and (6) Oxides when used as a raw materials. The question is in relation to "Grog Minerals"; do these words in the said Entry 70 refer to (1) Grog and (2) Minerals, or do they refer to one item known as Grog minerals. It will be seen that each item in the said Entry 70, other than "Grog Minerals", starts with a capital letter and is separated from the other by a comma. Where the item consists of two words, as in Zircon sand, Zircon has a capital `Z and sand has a small `s . There is, therefore, a patent error in the printing of said Entry 70. Either there should have been a comma between "Grog" and "Minerals" therein or "Minerals" should have had a small `m .

5. The word Grog usually means potable liquor, but it also means a substance used in refractories. It is, according to the Encyclopedia Brittancia, 1980 Edition, Macropaedia, Volume IV (quoted in the judgment of the High Court under challenge) mortor made of aluminium compounds and used as a refractory, sprayed to form linings of furnaces and ovens. Dealing with grog chemicals, the Encyclopedia states that most refractories are produced in the form of brick, bonded and fired in furnaces. Some castable refractories are made in the form of mortars, usually tabular alumina with calcium aluminate cement as a binder. These mortars, called grog, are sprayed under pressure to form the linings of the steel industry s basic oxygen, furnaces, electric ore furnaces, steel ladles and coke ovens, and for steam boilers, rotary kilns, and many other high temperature applications.

6. The case of the respondents initially was that "Grogmineral" was a single word. In a later affidavit it stated that the said Entry 70 referred to an item called Grog Minerals and, in this behalf, all that was referred to was an invoice of the Sihor Nagar Palika which showed that eight tonnes of "grog minerals" had been produced by M/s. Prakash Traders and imported into Sihor by Hightech Investment Pvt. Ltd. wherein octroi had been charged, Hightech Investment Pvt. Ltd. purchased the "grog minerals" from Bhavnagar Refrectories and Ceramics Manufacturing Company. It appears from the affidavit that the respondents had the "grog minerals" produced as aforesaid analysed by Istalab Private Limited. The report of the analysis shows that this product was a compound of silica, alumina, ferrous oxide, titanium dioxide, manganese oxide, calcium oxide, magnesium oxide, phosphorous penzoxide, sulpher trioxides, sodium oxide and potassium oxide; in other words, that it is not a mineral but a grog chemical of the kind referred to above.

7. Were there a material known to the technical world as "grog mineral", there would have been ample literature on the subject and the respondents would have produced it, particularly since, according to t