PROLITE ENGINEERING CO Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Special Civil Applications Nos. 1447 of 1980 and 1083 of 1985 are filed by M/s. Apex Electricals Pvt. Ltd. other six petitions are filed by different petitioners but as the question involved in all these petitions is the same all these petitions have been heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

(2.) Apex Electricals is a manufacturer of power and distribution transformers. Such transformers are manufactured by assembling High Tension and Low Tension Coils on assembled core made out of laminations. Laminations are prepared out of Cold Rolled Grain Oriented steel sheet. These sheets are not manufactured in India and therefore they have to be imported from foreign countries. They come in form of rolls. They are first slitted into width of required specification. After slitting is done the slitted rolls also known as strips are further required to be cut into small pieces of required dimensions and designs depending upon requirements of the customers. The places which thus come into existence as a result of this process are known as electrical laminations. They were at the relevant time chargeable to excise duty under Tariff Item No. 28A of the First Schedule to the Central Excises & Salt Act 1944

(3.) Apex Electricals was formerly purchasing C. R. G. O. sheets or ready-made laminations from the market. As it did not possess any facility either for slitting or for cutting the said sheets it used to get both the jobs performed by others on job work basis when it purchased C. R. G. O. sheets from the market. In 1979 it got an import licence and imported C. R. G. O. sheets. In respect of the C. R. G. O. sheets imported by it in the year 1979-80 it had got the slitting work done at Bombay. It had entered into argument with the following six parties for getting the slitted sheets cut into smaller sizes :