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2015 (11) TMI 1026 - HC - CustomsDenial of concessional rate of duty - violation of condition 6 - appellant/assessee was faced with the dilemma as to whether they must have a provisional clearance of the goods or they must await the actual issue of the EPCG licence and incur the demurrage. - Held that:- licence issued on 17.5.1995 imposed only two limitations or restrictions upon the assessee. One was in respect of time available to the assessee to complete the import and the other was the CIF value of the machinery which the licensee proposed to import. The conditions incorporated in annexure A of the licence did not call upon the assessee to wait until the date of issue of licence even for placing a purchase order upon the foreign exporter. The only restriction as could be seen from Annexure A to the licence was that the assessee should not have cleared the goods, from the Customs and should not have paid customs duty before the actual date of issue of licence. Appellant was forced to get the goods cleared from the Customs on 15.3.1995, as otherwise, they had to incur demurrage, without knowing the proposed date of issue of licence. The decision to grant licence for the import of the very same machinery at concessional rate had been taken by the Committee atleast one month before the date of clearance of the goods. The meeting in which the Committee decided to issue a licence took place on 13.2.1995 and the assessee cleared the machinery from the Customs on 15.3.1995. But, the DGFT issued the licence on 17.5.1995, despite the fact that nearly three months have passed by that time from the date of the decision. Therefore, the provisional clearance of goods on 15.3.1995 cannot be held against the assessee, especially when the very licence issued to the assessee had only two kinds of limitation, one in the form of a period of validity and another in the form of total CIF value of the import - Decided in favour of assessee.
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