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2016 (6) TMI 814 - HC - CustomsRate of duty on import of crude degummed soyabean oil of edible grade - when a notification comes in effect - Scope of section 25 - The petitioners claim that a notification that had not become effective on the relevant date has been arbitrarily cited by the Customs authorities to demand duty at a much higher rate than payable by the petitioning assessee. Held that:- The most cardinal rule in interpreting a statutory provision is that the language of the statute should be read as it is. If the language of Section 25(4) of the Act is not distorted and the intention thereof gathered from the language used therein, the plain meaning of the words used do not admit of a construction that unless a notification is published in the Official Gazette and unless such notification or the Official Gazette containing the same is put on sale, the notification is not deemed to come into force. The construction of the provision as the petitioners suggest would require the addition or substitution of words not found in the provision or the rejection of certain words as meaningless. It is elementary that if a provision in a statute can be read without adding words thereto or subtracting words therefrom, that would be the ideal construction, unless it throws up an absurd result. The literal construction in this case does not result in any absurdity. The fallacy in the petitioners’ argument is that it is founded on the responses received following the queries raised under the Act of 2005. The queries and the responses received are on the mistaken premise that it is the notification as published in the Official Gazette that must be put on sale. The wording of the relevant sub-section does not warrant such a construction. Both clauses of such sub-section would be complied with if a notification were to be issued for publication in the Official Gazette and such notification were to be simultaneously put up on the website and otherwise offered for sale, though the timing of the issuance of the notification may have resulted in the publication in the Official Gazette to be made a day later. As long as the publication of a relevant notification is made in the Official Gazette, whether within reasonable time or at the first available opportunity of such notification being issued for publication therein, the notification comes into effect immediately upon its issuance for publication in the Official Gazette notwithstanding the publication in the Official Gazette being later. There is no dispute that the notification was issued on the date it is said to have been. There is no dispute that the notification was issued for publication in the Official Gazette on the same day. There is even no dispute that the Official Gazette containing the said notification was published on the same day. All the that the petitioners have been able to demonstrate is that the Official Gazette containing the said notification may not have been put up for sale prior to September 21, 2015. But that is of no consequence. The notification came into force on the date of its issue for publication in the Official Gazette and such date, indisputably, was September 17, 2015. Even if a strict view of the matter is taken and the publication in the Official Gazette is seen to be a precondition to the coming into force of the said notification, that was also completed on September 17, 2015. If the Union’s assertion of copies of the notification being put up for sale on September 17, 2015 is disbelieved, at the highest, it would amount to non-compliance of clause (b) which would have no effect on when the notification came into force. The petition is dismissed with the observation that the liability of the petitioning assessee to pay the duty as per the notification of September 17, 2015 is unimpeachable. It is the higher rate of duty under the notification that the petitioning assessee is liable to pay. - Decided against the petitioners.
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