Commissioner of Customs Vs Canon India Pvt. Ltd. (Supreme Court of India)
The Supreme Court disposed of a batch of review petitions, appeals and writ petitions involving the common question of whether officers of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) are “proper officers” competent to issue show cause notices under Section 28 of the Customs Act, 1962. The Review Petition filed by the Commissioner of Customs against the judgment dated 09.03.2021 in Canon India Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner of Customs was treated as the lead matter.
The Court traced the background beginning with Commissioner of Customs v. Sayed Ali, which had held that only officers assigned assessment functions within the jurisdictional collectorate could issue notices under Section 28. Following that decision, Notification No. 44/2011-Cus. (N.T.) assigned the functions of proper officers to specified officers, and Section 28(11) was inserted through the Customs (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2011. The constitutional validity and scope of Section 28(11) had subsequently been considered by the Delhi High Court in Mangali Impex Ltd. v. Union of India and the Bombay High Court in Sunil Gupta v. Union of India.
The Department contended that the judgment in Canon India suffered from errors apparent on the face of the record because it had not considered the statutory scheme under Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Customs Act, the notifications appointing DRI officers as officers of customs, Notification No. 44/2011-Cus. (N.T.), Section 28(11), and the pendency of the appeal against Mangali Impex. The Department further argued that DRI officers were officers of customs appointed under Section 4, that Section 6 applied only to officers outside the customs hierarchy, and that the amendments introduced by the Finance Act, 2022 were clarificatory in nature. It also sought reconsideration of the principles laid down in Sayed Ali and the setting aside of the Delhi High Court decision in Mangali Impex.
