Bhubaneswar, Jan. 18 -- New Delhi: The good old traditional snack food 'papad' or 'pappadam', as it is known in south India, cannot be equated with packaged 'un-fried fryums' and cannot have similar tax treatment, the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR) has ruled.

In its order rejecting a petition seeking to bring irregular sized packaged snack food as referred to as un-fried fryums at par with papad for applicability of GST, the AAR said that in the matter of the product under reference, where no clear definition has been provided in the statute, the principle of common parlance is used.

This means interpretation of statutes for deciphering the mind of the lawmaker rather than any other scientific reasoning.

With this interpretation, ...