ACCEL FRONTLINE LIMITED Vs. COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) M /s Accel Frontline Limited, a joint venture in India (hereinafter referred to as the Applicant) have filed this application under Sub -section (1) of Section 28H of the Customs Act 1962. They state that they are engaged in the business of providing services for development of information technology infrastructure and software. In Annexure -I to their application it is stated that they propose to provide to customers in India the service of data recovery, where the data contained in floppy, hard disc drive or any other hardware medium, is damaged or corrupted. The applicant would receive the data in a defective medium from specific customers for undertaking the job of recovery of data. For effecting such recovery, the damaged/corrupted medium containing the data would be exported abroad, where data will be recovered and stored in a new medium. The data recovered and recorded on a new medium will be sent to India, along with the damaged medium from which the data was recovered. For rendering this service of recovering the data, the agency abroad will collect a service fee from the applicant. Normally, if the recovered data is less than 20GB in size, it will be sent in multiple digital video discs (DVDs) which will be provided by the foreign agency to the applicant free of charge. If the data is more than 20GB, the same will be provided on a hard disc drive (HDD) and the cost of such drive will be billed to the applicant. In column 12 of the application they have posed the following questions for pronouncement of a ruling by this Authority:

(2.) IN Annexure II containing the applicant's interpretation of law and facts, it has been claimed that the media containing the data i.e. DVDs and HDDs are classifiable under 8523. It is stated that at the time of sending the defective media containing the data to be recovered, no duty is applicable. When the recovered data is sent back to India on new DVDs and HDDs, these imports are exempted from basic customs duty under notification No. 24/2005 dated 1.3.05 and attract CV duty of 16 per cent under 85.23 of Central Excise Tariff. The applicant have claimed total exemption from customs duty against sr.No. 3 of Customs Notification No. 94/2006 dated 16.12.96 for the re -importation of the DVDs and HDDs containing the damaged/corrupted data which had been exported and are proposed to be re -imported, along with the new media containing the recovered data.

(3.) ADVANCE ruling in the application has been sought in respect of classification and valuation of the following imports: