ADROIT INDUSTRIES (INDIA) LIMITED Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners have filed the present petition seeking the following relief/s :

(2.) The Government of India has introduced the Merchandise Export from India Scheme (MEIS) as a Foreign Trade Policy 201520 which has now been discontinued for the export w.e.f. 1/1/2021. Under the scheme, incentives were given to the Indian exporters in terms of Duty Credit Scrips @ 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7% of the FOB value of realized exports made during the validity period. The process of availing the aforesaid benefit is provided under the scheme itself and according to which, at the time of filing of shipping bills, if the HS Code of the exported product is under the eligible code list (Appendix 3B of MEIS) then the exporter is required to mark "Yes" by clicking "Y" in the rewards column of the shipping bill. All such "Yes" marked shipping bills are transferred from the Customs Database to the DGFT database electronically. Once the payment for these shipments is realized, the exporter requests the concerned bank to generate and upload an electronic Bank Realization Certificate (eBRC) on the DGFT server. After this, for every IEC (exporter), the DGFT database has details of goods exported and the consequent realization amount. Thereafter, the exporter was required to lodge the portal where his electronic date is available to him in DGFT online repository and tag the individual shipping bills in the online application with e-BRC and an application is submitted. Under the provisions of the scheme, without electronic data of shipping bills being transmitted from the Customs server, such shipping bills are not present in the DGFT repository and a claim under MEIS cannot be applied by the exporter for the relevant shipping bills.

(3.) The case of the present petitioners is that as per Paragraph 3.04 of Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 for the period from 2017-18 and 2018-19 and 2/19/20 the petitioner could not avail the benefit of MEIX due to the clerical error as they could not tick "Y" (for Yes) in the reward column of shipping bills. Under these circumstances, the system automatically treated the shipping bills as "N" (for No) in the reward column of the shipping bills.