On 17 April 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — majority opinion authored by Rangnath Misra J. on behalf of himself and three other judges, with a separate concurring opinion by O. Chinnappa Reddy J. — unanimously held that excise duty paid directly by McDowell's buyers to the State to obtain distillery passes formed part of McDowell's turnover under the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act, 1957; the structural arrangement was a colourable device. The majority articulated that tax planning within the law is legitimate but colourable devices cannot be part of tax planning; Chinnappa Reddy J.'s concurrence went further, drawing on the UK Ramsay–Burmah Oil–Dawson line to urge a substance-over-form approach. A digest of the bench composition (as independently verifiable), the architecture of the Andhra excise scheme, the doctrinal contribution, and the post-McDowell arc through Azadi Bachao, Vodafone, and the statutory GAAR.