ADANI POWER LTD. Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) This appeal is directed against the judgment and order dtd. 28/6/2019 passed by the High Court of Gujarat in Special Civil Application No. 2233 of 2016. By the impugned judgment, the High Court declined to grant the reliefs sought by the appellant, Adani Power Limited, which had inter alia prayed for a declaration that no customs duty was leviable on electrical energy generated in its power plant located in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and supplied to the Domestic Tariff Area (DTA), and for consequential refund of amounts deposited towards such duty. The High Court took the view that its earlier judgment delivered in 2015 in favour of the appellant was confined to a particular notification and period, and could not be extended to the later period or to subsequent notifications issued by the Union. Aggrieved, the appellant has approached this Court.

(3.) The controversy is not merely fiscal. It raises, in our view, questions that bear upon three foundational aspects of our legal order: first, the limits of delegated legislation in matters of taxation; secondly, the discipline of judicial precedent and the obligation of co-ordinate Benches to adhere to settled law; and thirdly, the obligation of the State to give effect to judicial declarations instead of reasserting, in altered form, a levy already declared to be without authority of law.