Adjudication in 60 cases of duty evasion halts

NEW DELHI, January 23: Even as the Finance Ministry is making efforts to speed-up adjudication of customs and excise cases to garner additional revenue, the adjudication process for nearly 60 cases of alleged duty evasion of around Rs 120 crore booked by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has come to a halt. The reason: the commissioner (Adjudication), J N Nigam, who was appointed for adjudication of the DRI cases only, has been transferred to the Excise department as commissioner in Mumbai. However, no one has been appointed in his place.

Sources said the transfer orders were issued in mid-December barely three months after he was assigned the task of adjudicating the customs duty violation matters booked by the intelligence agency. The move to centralise adjudication was aimed at speeding-up the process to settle cases having all-India implications. The DRI wrote to the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) in the last week of December, requesting them to either ask Nigam to continue adjudication work or immediately appoint a replacement to handle these cases. However, the board is yet to issue any instructions in this regard.

The DRI had referred about 60 cases to the commissioner (Adjudication), with eight cases of alleged duty evasion to the tune of Rs 40 crore by the Calcutta-based Ganapati Exports Ltd and three cases of alleged duty evasion of Rs 6 crore by the Delhi-based Rastogis being the most prominent ones. Other cases relate to Usha Continental, Essar Gujarat, Krishna Electronics, and a shipping company.

While the move to speed-up adjudication of pending cases by the end of 1997 was a part of the drive to shore-up revenue, the customs department’s overall performance was satisfactory with adjudication of about 65 per cent cases. Earlier, the excise department’s move for early adjudication of disputes to recover duties dues had failed to have the desired impact. Though nearly 65 per cent cases out of the 60,000 pending cases were adjudicated till December 31, most of major cases were still not finalised.