Under the Karnataka Sales Tax Act, poultry meat and eggs are taxed only if they are sold in “sealed containers”. A hatchery that sold its poultry items in stapled plastic pouches challenged the imposition of sales tax on its goods. It contended that stapled bags are not sealed containers. After the tax authorities and the Karnataka High Court rejected their contention, the company approached the Supreme Court. The apex court held that a package can be considered sealed only if the container or the fastening has to be broken to get at the contents inside. Disagreeing with the high court that undoing amounts to breaking, the apex court ruled that a stapled pouch could not be considered a sealed container (Balkrishna Hatcheries vs Clarification and Advance Ruling Authority).
In a marital dispute case, the husband who lived in the US, asked the court to allow him to give evidence through video conferencing. The wife opposed this, saying that the man was trying to avoid producing his passport because it has the name of another woman as his wife. The Andhra Pradesh High Court, however, allowed the man’s request, stating that the recently amended Evidence Act recognises electronic records as admissible evidence. The court also made it clear that the man would have to display individual pages of his passport during the course of recording (Bodala Murali Krishna vs Smt Bodala Prathima).
The Andhra Pradesh government exempts handicapped persons with driving licenses from paying lifetime tax on their vehicles. A polio-afflicted man, who intended to buy a car with automatic transmission, applied for this exemption. His application was rejected because the authorities felt that allowing him to drive an automatic transmission car may endanger road safety. The man approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court, which ruled that since the same transport authorities had issued the license that allowed the man to drive a scooter and a car, it could not reject his application just because the car he planned to drive had automatic transmission (V. Lakshma Reddy vs State of AP).
SOLON
