Case Law Details
Hindalco Industries Limited Vs Union of India & Ors (Delhi High Court)
The controversy, in the present petition, relates to denial of the benefits under the MEIS as framed under Chapter 3 of Foreign Trade Policy. The petitioner states that it had, during the period June, 2016 to September, 2016 exported aluminium hydroxide under 97 different separate Shipping Bills. The Shipping Bills were accompanied by a declaration to the effect that the petitioner intended to claim rewards under MEIS, however, in the electronic filing, the petitioner had not tick/marked ‘Y’ in the reward column for claiming such benefits, in respect of the said shipping bills. Consequently, the details of the Shipping Bills in question (97 in number) were not transmitted electronically from respondent no.4 to respondent no.2. Resultantly, the petitioner has been denied MEIS scrips of a value of ₹34,15,924/-.
The learned counsel appearing for the respondents, states that a committee of officers, which was constituted pursuant to orders passed in another matter – Jubilant Biosys Limited v Direcotrate General of Foreign Trade and Others: W.P.(C) 14 754/2022 – has taken a lenient view. In the said case, the petitioner (Jubilant Biosys Limited) had been denied the benefit of MEIS scheme for somewhat similar reason. Pursuant to the order passed by the Court in that petition, a meeting of the concerned officers was held and the said officers had decided to extend the benefit of the MEIS scheme to the petitioner in question. It is relevant to note that the concerned officers had decided that Customs will transmit the shipping bills to DGFT through a manual intervention at ICEGATE. The DGFT, based on the said electronic transmission, and keeping in view the manual amendments made, would process the case for further grant of MEIS benefits as an exceptional matter.
This Court is of the view that the similar benefits ought to be extended to the petitioner in this case as well. The petitioner’s case stands on a better footing as it had clearly indicated that it intended to take the benefit of the MEIS scheme. Thus, the error of not marking ‘Y’ against the reward column is clearly an inadvertent error.
In view of the above, respondent no.4 shall transmit the corrected bills through manual intervention at ICEGATE.
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