Case Law Details
CA Urvashi Porwal
Brief of the Case
In the case of Vodafone India Ltd. V/s. The Commissioner of Central Excise, it was held by Bombay High Court that by following the principles laid down in the case of Bharti Airtel Ltd. v/s Commissioner of Central Excise, a telecom service provider is not entitled to credit of duty paid on towers (in CKD and DKD form), parts of towers, shelter / prefabricated buildings used for providing output service.
Brief Facts
The Appellant is inter alia engaged in the business of providing telecom services under the category ‘telecommunication services’ within the telecom circles of Mumbai. It is the case of the Appellant that during the course of its business, it is required to set up various equipments which are integral to, and used for providing such services. Such equipments are essential and an integral part of the telecom service delivery across the world and is the backbone of the telecom service. Such infrastructure includes public switching equipment, transmission equipment and various customer premises equipment. At the heart of the whole infrastructure is the Base Transceiver Station (BTS) which facilitates wireless communication between the customer’s equipment (eg. mobile phones) and the main network. The general architecture of the BTS system involves various equipment such as antennae, towers, pre-fabricated buildings etc. and all these, in combination, are used by the Appellant in delivering telecom services to its customers.
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