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(b) Whether the Tribunal was correct in law in holding that the activity of the respondents in feeding the one day old chicks and rearing them with a view to obtain eggs, does not amount to 'manufacture' with the meaning of section 2(17) of the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1959 ?"

2. The facts giving rise to the reference are as follows :

The respondents conduct a poultry farm. The activities of the respondents inter alia comprise buying one day old chicks and rearing them into broilers or layers and rearing hens with a view to obtain eggs and selling broilers or layers and eggs laid by the layers and collected from the hens. During the period from 1st April, 1971, to 31st December, 1971, the turnover of purchases of the respondents was Rs. 34,800 and the turnover of sales was Rs. 23,456.74. The Sales Tax Officer concerned held that the above activities of the respondents amounted to manufacture within the meaning of section 2(17) of the said Act. The Sales Tax Officer fixed the liability of the respondents on the footing that they were entitled to the lower exemption of limit of Rs. 10,000 as provided in sub-section (4) of section 3 of the said Act. The Sales Tax Officer assessed the total tax payable by the respondents at Rs. 631.26 and levied a penalty of Rs. 94.68. The appeal preferred by the respondents to the Assistant Commissioner of Sales Tax was dismissed on the ground that the activities of the respondents amounted to manufacture within the meaning of section 2(170 of the said Act. The respondents filed a second appeal before the Sales Tax Tribunal. The Tribunal following its earlier decision in the case of Messrs. Rocha Poultry Farm (Appeal No. 47 of 1971 decided on 18th April, 1973) held that the activity of the respondents of rearing one day old chicks into broilers or layers does not amount to manufacture within the meaning of section 2(17) of the said Act. The Tribunal also held that the activity of rearing hens with a view to obtain eggs from the hence and collection of these eggs laid by the hens also does not amount to manufacture within the meaning of section 2(17) of the said Act. It is the correctness of this decision which is sought to be tested before us by way of questions referred to hereinabove.

3. The term "manufacture" is defined in sub-section (17) of section 2 of the said Act. The said sub-section states :

"'manufacture', with all its grammatical variations and cognate expressions, means producing, making, extracting, altering, ornamenting, finishing or otherwise processing, treating, or adapting any goods; but does not include such manufactures or manufacturing processes as may be prescribed."

We are not concerned with any manufacture or manufacturing process which has been specifically excluded, because there was no argument to the effect that the activities carried on by the respondents, as set out above, were excluded specifically from the scope of the definition contained in section 2(17). At the relevant time, section 3 of the said Act inter alia provided certain limits of turnover below which the dealer concerned was not liable to tax under the said Act. In respect of a manufacturer, this limit was fixed at Rs. 10,000 and in the case of a dealer who was not a manufacturer or importer, the limits was fixed at Rs. 30,000. The submission of Mr. Thakor, learned counsel for the Commissioner, is that a broiler is a distinct commercial commodity which is different from one or two days old chicks. One or two days old chicks could not be regarded as edible whereas as broiler can be regarded as edible and is generally considered to be a table bird. It was urged by him that the definition of the term "manufacture" in sub-section (17) of section 2 showed that the definition given was an enlarged definition so as to include within its scope many activities which would not, in common parlance or ordinary language, be regarded as manufacture. In respect of the first question, it was contended by Mr. Thakor that it feeding and rearing one day old chicks into broilers, it could be said that the respondents had conducted the activity of altering or treating or adapting the chicks into broilers. The facts found by the Tribunal showed that the respondents conducted a regular poultry farm and according to Mr. Thakor, this would imply that all care was taken in the poultry farm to keep the chicks in goods health and to feed them properly, so that they would turn into broilers. Mr. Thakor drew our attention to some meanings given to the term "adapt" in some dictionaries. In this connection, we may point out that the definition of the word "adapt" in Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (Sixth Reprint 1981, page 13) and the Concise Oxford Dictionary (reprinted in India with corrections 1972, page 15) show that the said word means "to make a thing suitable for a purpose" or "to modify or to alter it for a purpose". One can be said to alter an article when he does anything to change character of that article. By the phrase "treating an article" is clearly meant applying something in the nature of a "process" to the article. The only activity which is found by the Tribunal attributable to the respondents in rearing chicks into broilers is that they have taken proper care in looking after the chicks, feeding them and keeping them in sanitary conditions. There is no finding of the Tribunal that any special diet was given to enable the chicks to grow into broilers or that anything other was done to the chicks, except such things as would normally be included in rearing. In our view, merely rearing a chicks with care until it attains a particular age at which it turns into a broiler cannot be said to be altering, treating or adapting the chick. It is common ground that a chick when it is about ten weeks old can be considered to be a broiler. All that the respondents are said to have done is to rear male chicks and female chicks. As far as the male chicks are concerned, when they were ten weeks old, they were sold as broiler. As far as female chicks were concerned, it seems that they were kept and those of them that turned into layers were preserved for the purpose of getting eggs. In our view, the activity of rearing the male chicks into broiler cannot possibly be regarded as amounting to manufacture even within the extended meaning of the said term in sub-section (17) of section 2 of the said Act.

5. Mr. Thakor next drew our attention to the decision of the Supreme Court in State of Karnataka v. B. Raghurama Shetty . This case again is of no relevance for the determination of the question before us, because all that is held there is that paddy and rice are two distinct commodities and the milling of paddy involves a manufacturing process. This decision throws no light whatever on the question whether rearing a chick into a broiler amounts to manufacture. We may make it clear that although some contentions were raised before us as to whether a broiler can be regarded as a different commercial commodity from a one or two days old chick, we do not propose to go into that question, because even on the assumption that a broiler is a different commercial commodity from a chick, yet, in our view, rearing of a chick into a broiler does not amount to manufacture within the meaning of section 2(17) of the said Act.