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5. Unserviceable goods said to have been sold by the Port Trust are old paper, iron, scraps, containers, dismantled structures, old trucks etc. The sales of such articles can of course be brought to charge by virtue of the amended definition of "business", if they have been effected by a dealer. But as already held the Port Trust cannot be considered to be a dealer engaged in a business or a commercial venture.

In Director of Supplies and Disposals v. Board of Revenue, West Bengal, Calcutta (1967) 20 S.T.G. 398 : (1967) 2 I.T.J. 847 : (1968) 1 S.G.J. 792 : (1967) 3 S.G.R. 778 : A.I.R. 1967 S.G. 1826, their Lordships of the Supreme Court considered a somewhat similar question. In that case the Director of Supplies and Disposals was taxed on his sales of some surplus materials. It was found that the function of the Directorate of Supplies and Disposals was to dispose of the surplus goods and to purchase goods on behalf of the Government of India and that a considerable portion of the surplus materials left in India at the conclusion of the last war by the American Government which were no longer useful or have become obsolete were sold to the public in a series of transactions. The question there was whether the Director of Supplies and Disposals carried on the business of selling the goods and was a dealer within the meaning of Section 2(c) of the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941. The Court held that though the expression "business" is a word of wide and indefinite import, there must be some real, systematic or organised course of activity or conduct with a set purpose of making profit, that the Director was merely disposing of the surplus material by way of realisation of its value and that, therefore, the transactions were not taxable as sales effected by a dealer.