The petitioner in W.P. No. 4764 of 1978 is engaged in the manufacture of heavy duty motor vehicles and the goods manufactured by it are liable to excise duty under the Central Excises & Salt Act, 1944, hereinafter called the Act. Since there was a change in the warding of Section 4 of the Act effective from 1-10-1975, the petitioner was directed to submit its price lists of various goods and accordingly they were submitted. The 'value' of the goods has to be determined at the price at which it charged to its dealer; whereas the third respondent treated the main dealers appointed by the petitioner in India as 'related persons' within the meaning of the definition of that word under Section 4(4)(c) of the Act, which is to the following effect :

"'related person' means a person who is so associated with the assessee that they have interest, directly or indirectly, in the business of each other and -includes a holding company, a subsidiary company, a relative and a distributor of the assessee, and any sub-distributor of such distributor." *

The claim of the respondents is that the amount which the main dealer was entitled to earn on selling the goods to other dealers should