Customs - Adjudication by DRI officers
PARA 5 of the Board Circular No 44/2011- Cus dated 23.09.2011 clarified that the officers of DRI and DGCEI shall not exercise authority in terms of section 28(8) of the Customs Act, 1962 even though they have been assigned the function of ‘proper officers' for the purposes of section 17 and section 28 of the Customs Act 1962 vide notification No 44/2011- Cus (N.T.) dated 6.07.2011.
Section 17 (inter alia) deals with verification of self-assessment and re-assessment by the proper officer.
Section 28(8) deals with adjudication of demand notices for recovery of duty.
Pursuant to the Cadre restructuring/reorganization of CBEC, new posts in the rank of Commissioners of Customs have been created in DRI and DGCEI for adjudication of cases relating to cases investigated by DRI and DGCEI.
Board has decided that henceforth, specified officers of DRI and DGCEI may attend to work relating to adjudication of case where show cause notices of short levy/non levy of customs duty have been issued under section 28 of the Customs Act 1962.
Board Circular No. 44/2011- Cus dated 23.09.2011 stands modified to the above extent.
This is a very sensible action; there is no point in DRI issuing a Show Cause Notice and a Jurisdictional Commissioner adjudicating it. As a rule, Commissioners confirm every demand, and nobody has the guts to drop a Show Cause Notice issued by DRI.
DRI is famous for issuing humungous Show Cause Notices - in terms of length of the Show Cause Notice and the amount of duty demanded. Normally adjudicating officers don't read the entire Show Cause Notice. Now that DRI can adjudicate, the hassle of sending the Show Cause Notice and connected files to the jurisdictional officers can be avoided. And since any way DRI has prepared the Show Cause Notice, they can change a few words in the Show Cause Notice to make it the adjudication order.
Actually the Government should seriously consider dropping one step in the adjudication procedure. The Show Cause Notice and the adjudication order can be merged. A sentence may be added at the end of the Show Cause Notice, “therefore it is proved beyond all shades of doubt that the importer is liable to pay the duty, interest and penalty." This will at least save lot of time and paper in replying to the Show Cause Notice and appearing before the learned Commissioner.
It is said that 90% of the notices are confirmed by the Commissioners in their adjudication orders (the remaining 10% are reviewed by the Committee of Chief Commissioner) and 90% of these orders are set aside by the Tribunal. Do we need to run such a farcical system?
CBEC Circular No. 14/2014-Customs, Dated: December 11, 2014