I.O.C. LTD Vs. COLLECTOR OF CUSTOMS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a revision application (hereinafter called ''appeal") filed before the Central Government which under Section 131 B of the Customs Act, 1962, stands transferred to this Tribunal to be disposed of as if it were an appeal presented before the Tribunal.

(2.) THE salient facts are that the appellants had a bonded tank in their Visakhapatnam installation in which they were storing non -duty paid furnace oil, indigenous as well as imported. Clearances of the oil from the bonded tank were taken from time to time, on payment of full. duty or after taking advantage of duty exemptions admissible in respect of furnace oil used for specified purposes. On 24.10.73 the appellants, according to the statutory accounts contained in their RG1 register, had a balance of 235 KL of indigenous oil and 1319 KL of imported oil in the tank (for convenience fractions of a KL are omitted). On 24.10.73 they filed a "provisional" Bill of Entry for the quantity of 1319 KL of imported oil for home consumption, and paid the corresponding amount of duty, it appears that there was a procedure whereby the appellants used to estimate the quantities of oil which they expected to clear for home consumption over a period of 2 or 3 weeks. They would pay the appropriate duty on this quantity of oil, but would not remove the whole quantity immediately. Instead, they would remove quantities as required from time to timekeeping an account of the quantities removed, and at the end of the period of 2 or 3 weeks, when a quantity app -loximately equal to that declared in the Bill of Entry had been removed, they would "finalise" or "close" the Bill of Entry, and pay duty or claim refund, as the case might be, on the difference between the quantity declared and the total quantity actually cleared.

(3.) IN accordance with this procedure the appellants cleared 235 KL of oil for home consumption on 14.11.73 and 198 KL of oil for home consumption on 16.11.73. On 19.11.73, they supplied 475 KL of oil from the tank to bunker a coastal vessel. Subsequently, they made further clearances for home consumption of 411 KL of oil completing the process on 4.12.73. By these clearances they accounted for the total quantity of imported oil, namely 1319 KI, which was in the tank on 24.10.73.