A division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court has directed the customs department to re-consider a claim where procedure lapse of non-mentioning of MEIS scheme resulted in denying benefit to the exporter.
The petitioner, M/S Adroit Industries (India) Ltd could not avail the benefit of MEIX due to the clerical error as they could not tick “Y” (for Yes) in the reward column of shipping bills. Under these circumstances, the system automatically treated the shipping bills as “N” (for No) in the reward column of the shipping bills. Since the aforesaid mistake was committed by several exporters, therefore, the DGFT with a view to promoting the exports from India issued Trade Notice No. 24/2018 dated 21.2.2018 asking the exporters to submit their applications in a proper format. The petitioner has also submitted the representation on 19.7.2019 followed by a reminder and the legal notice. When no response was received, petitioner no.1 has filed the present petition.
The petitioner contended that the object of the scheme under the Chapter is to provide rewards to the exporters in order to get more and more imports to India and relied on a few decisions where the Kerala High Court, as well as Bombay High Court, came to the rescue of similarly placed exporters.
The bench comprising Shri Justice Vivek Rusia & Shri Justice Amar Nath (Kesharwani) noted that the Commissioner of Customs issued Public Notice No.88/2017 dated 5.7.2017 prescribing the procedure for amendment/conversion of the shipping bills from one scheme to another scheme and according to which the post-shipment amendments shall ordinarily be examined and disposed of within a period of 30 days from the date of receipt of the request from the CB/exporter and in case of delay beyond the stipulated period, the CB/exporter may approach the JC/ADC concerned to resolve the
“The petitioner has only challenged the action of the DGFT in this petition by which the claim has been rejected. As held above, the DGFT has rightly declined on the basis of the bills received in the server from the Customs Department. Therefore, the petitioners ought to have approached the Customs Department for correction of the shipping bills and after such correction in the shipping bills, the DGFT get jurisdiction or authority to examine the matter. Hence no relief can be granted to petitioners in this writ petition hence the writ petition is dismissed However petitioners shall be at liberty to approach respondent No.5 seeking rectification/correction in shipping bills online. Thereafter, respondent No.5 is directed to consider the claim of the petitioners by an appropriate committee as per law and the scheme,” the Court concluded.
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