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Showing contexts for: engineering contract in Man Industrial Corporation Ltd. vs The State And Anr. on 13 May, 1965Matching Fragments
10. In Kailash Engineering Co.'s case, 1964-15 SCT 574 (Guj) it entered into a contract with the railway administration for the performance of the works of "building, erecting and furnishing of third class timber coach bodies" on broad gauge underframes to be supplied by the railway administration. It was further provided that all materials and plant brought by the Kailash Engineering Co. upon the land will be deemed to be the property of the railway. It was held by the High Court of Gujarat that the contact was not a contract for the sale of goods, but was a contract for work and labour.
21. This contract if broken into components admits of three stages. The first being that the assessee was to obtain and provide steel of specified quality. The second part consisted in fabricating the doors, windows and sashes by employment of skilled and unskilled labour in accordance with the specifications shown in the tender, and affirmed by the work order and the third stage consisted of in carrying to the site and fixing these fabricated articles to the building site where the employer was to fix this fabricated material into masonry construction in accordance with the terms of the contract. It is after the completion of this stage that the property in the fabricated windows which had become the part of the building construction that the property in the goods passed. In our opinion these circumstances go to show that the contract of the assessee partakes of the nature of a building contract. Hudson's Buildings and Engineering Contracts, 8th Edition (1959) at page 36 describes building contracts in the following terms:
"Building and engineering contracts are those agreements under which a person (in this book referred to as 'the builder' or 'the contractor') undertakes to execute building or civil engineering works for another person (in this book referred to as 'the employer' or 'the building owner'). The extent of the works to be executed may vary from the construction or repair of a small structure to the erection of large multiple buildings and housing estates and engineering works of every description and magnitude."
22. Even if it was to be treated as a contract wherein fabricated units were to be affixed into the building of another the case would appear to be of the nature of Carl Still's case, 1961-12 STC 449: (AIR 1961 SC, 1615) and Voltas's case, 1963-14 STC 448 (Mad). The price payable was not for unit as such but the contract included within its compass the engineering skill to be employed in fabrication and fixation of these units for an all inclusive price. It was, therefore, an indivisible contract not liable to sales tax.