Government amends a superseded notification
Anti-dumping duty on Oxo Alcohols originating or exported from Poland, Saudi Arabia etc., Government amends yet another dead notification – By Notification No. 80/2005-Cus., dated 5th September, 2005 the government proposes to extend the anti-dumping duty imposed under Notification No. 109/2000-Cus., dated 18th August, 2000 to 26th day of January, 2006.
A very innocent amending notification! But the only problem is this notification 109/2000 had been superseded by Notification No. 98/2001-Cus., dated 26-09-2001.
An anti dumping notification has a life of five years unless extended. So Notification No. 109/2000 expired on 17.8.2005. Now on 5th September 2005 – Teachers’ Day, the Government has extended the life of the Notification till next Republic Day. But can the Government extend the validity period of a notification that had already expired? If they wanted to extend the life of the notification, should they have not done this before 18th August 2005?
But this is not a case of the Government being late by a fortnight in amending the notification. The issue is murkier. Notification No. 109/2000 had been superseded by Notification No. 98/2001-Cus., dated 26-9-2001 and the Government is not aware of its own superseded notification. And goes on merrily to amend the superseded Notification No. 109/2000!.
If the Government does not know the status of its own notifications, who else will? This is not the first time the Government is amending a dead notification. In DDT 20 on 31.12.2004, DDT had pointed out about the Government amending another dead notification. DDT had then observed, If this is the way notifications are manufactured at the top, can you blame the field for ineptitude? Of course it is really difficult to keep track of the hundreds of live and dead notifications, especially with the kind of facilities (or the lack of them) provided to the very important sections of the department
It is now an encore. Obviously it is proved beyond doubt that Notification making is too serious a business that can be left to the whims of the Board. Anti Dumping notifications are watched all over the world and if the Board is determined to undermine our prestige before the world by such acts of amending non existent notifications, we can only feel sorry for the Finance Minister. It takes less than half a minute to check up whether a notification is existing or not and if the great bosses in the Board do not have that half minute to spare, we will become laughing stock before the world. Board is supposed to have a master file of all the notifications with its latest status. If the Board does not have this, who else will? It is really difficult to issue and manage notifications properly, but if the Board cannot do it, should we not think of outsourcing the activity of notification manufacturing on job work?
NOTIFICATION. No. dated 5th September, 2005