Mohit Industries vs. Commissioner of Customs - (Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal) (06 Jul 2022)

Section 17 of BIS Act prohibit the import of goods without requisite BIS license

MANU/CE/0228/2022

Customs

The Appellant is engaged in import of Cold Rolled Grain Oriented (CRGO) Electrical Steel Sheet/Coils. For import of CRGO, Steel Sheets/Coils, BIS certificate is a mandatory requirement as per the Extant Steel and Steel Products (Quality Control) Order, 2018 issued by Ministry of Steel. The same is also mentioned in the instruction issued under F. No. 450/71/2014 dated 9th July, 2014 by CBIC. Department initiated an investigation on the basis of information about forged/fake BIS certificates and accordingly, the premises (residential as well as official) of the Appellant were searched on 1st March, 2019 under respective Panchnamas. Vide the Panchnama of even date certain incriminating documents, import documents with one laptop were also resumed. Statements of persons concern were recorded.

Holding the said mandatory certificate as fake/forged, the Show Cause Notice was served upon the Appellant proposing the confiscation of the goods in the impugned imported consignment for the declared value of Rs.1,13,26,839 alleging the same to have been illegally imported vide Bill of Entry by using fake/forged BIS certificate penalty was also proposed to be imposed. The said proposal was initially confirmed vide Order-in- Original. The appeal thereof has been rejected vide the order under challenge.

The impugned consignment was detained and was proposed to be confiscated for want of the proper BIS certificate. This being a Bureau of India Standards certificate is issued by the respective Ministry in the favour of the manufacturer who further issues same to its buyers. Since the goods herein are CRGO Electrical Steel Sheet/Coils, Section 17 of BIS Act, 2016 prohibit the import of goods without requisite BIS license and fulfilment of the conditions that the products should made the prescribed quality parameters/technical requirements of the relevant Indian standards and also should bear the standard mark.

In the present case, it has come on record that the certificate on the impugned goods was the one bearing no. IS 3024:2006, whereas, as per Indian standards specification for CRGO the ISI mark at the relevant time, stood revised as IS 3024:2015 by the competent Authorities. Further, the employee of the Appellant who was admittedly responsible for preparing the import documents including BIS certificate i.e. Mr. Manoj Kumar, Accountant of the Appellant in his statement dated 7th March, 2019, admitted the recovered laptop to belong to him. He also admitted the documents retrieved there from to have been prepared by him including the excel work book named as BIS certificate saved in local disk of said laptop. Not only this, he also admitted for those excel sheets to be received in soft editable form of BIS/Mill Test certificates.

The proprietor could not explain about absence of revised ISI mark on the impugned goods. The documents on record do not support the defence taken by the appellant. The admission of Appellant's accountant, about preparing BIS certificates on their own on the editable formats procured rather stands corroborated from the e- mail sent by the exporter about impugned certificate to be fake which otherwise does not bear signature of any competent authority. Hence, there is no infirmity in the findings arrived at by Commissioner (Appeals). Appeal dismissed.

Tags : CONFISCATION GOODS LEGALITY