By TIOL News Service

CHENNAI, JULY 24, 2015: THE respondent department finalised the provisional assessments in respect of import of Superior Kerosene Oil made by the petitioner from 1994 to 1998 in respect of ten Bills of Entry. However, the grievance of the petitioner is, the respondent has wrongly included the demurrage charges, wharrfage and stock loss under 'assessable value'. The dispute has been settled by the High Court in W.A.No.1450 of 2009 and the First Bench of the High Court, by order dated 20.11.2009, allowed the writ appeal directing the respondent not to include demurrage, wharffage and stock loss charges into the assessable value. However, in spite of such direction, the second respondent has not finalised the assessment of the 63 imports already made by them. Therefore, they were constrained to file another writ petition in W.P.No.32961 of 2012 seeking a direction to the respondents to finalise the assessment relating to the imports in accordance with the direction of the First Bench. The High Court, by order dated 07.01.2013, once again directed the second respondent to rework and finalize the assessment in terms of paragraph Nos.6 and 7 of the order passed in W.A.No.1450 of 2009, dated 20.11.2009.

Since department has not passed any orders, the Petitioner filed another Writ Petition by way of third round of litigation to implement the above said two orders of the High Court.

The High Court called for the file from the department and noted that -

This Court, on receiving the file from the department, perused the legal opinion given by the department counsel Mr.E.Vijay Anand on 26.10.2010, whereby he opined that the department has suffered inordinate delay in preferring the appeal before the higher Court, therefore, he has given an option either to accept the order passed by this Court or to prefer an appeal facing the risk of huge delay. It is not known whether such opinion of the department counsel accepted or not, however, from the file, it is seen that they have not preferred any appeal. Therefore, it is not known why the respondent has not immediately taken any steps to accept the order passed by this Court in W.A.No.1450 of 2009, dated 20.11.2009.

Showing concern over non-implementation of the earlier orders, the High Court held:

From the facts, it is clear that the petitioner has been made to fight a long battle resulting in physical and mental harassment apart from financial implications. When a case like this absolutely warrants imposition of damages, a let-loose and slight approach would only further encourage the authorities in playing foul games even before Courts. Therefore, although this Court can direct the Government to initiate departmental action against all those officers responsible for non-compliance of the orders passed by this Court as stated supra, while refraining from doing so, this Court, falling in line with the Division Bench decision in G.Rajaram's case, deems it fit to impose exemplary costs of Rs.1,00,000/- (Rupees one lakh) on the respondent-department and, out of such amount, Rs.50,000/- shall be paid to the petitioner towards the litigation fees and the balance amount of Rs.50,000/- shall be paid to the Tamil Nadu Mediation and Conciliation Centre, Chennai, for wasting the precious time of the Court. Accordingly, the respondents are directed to complete the said exercise within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of this order. Needless to mention that the department is at liberty to recover the said amount from those persons who are responsible for non-implementation of the orders passed by this Court as stated above, after issuing proper notice to them.

(See 2015-TIOL-1667-HC-MAD-CUS)