Writ maintainability and excise notice validity turn on territorial nexus and an invalidated exemption-notification explanation.

A writ petition on the Original Side was held maintainable because the petitioners' registered office, plant and buildings were in Bombay, and the dispute was not confined outside the Court's territorial limits merely because the notice issued from Agra related to factories there. An excise show cause notice was then struck down because it depended on an explanation to an exemption notification that had already been invalidated and on a deeming fiction treating branded footwear purchased from independent manufacturers as the petitioners' own manufacture. The Department could not sustain the notice on that footing or recast it into a different case not pursued in reply, so the notice lacked legal foundation and was quashed.

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Issues: (i) whether the writ petition was maintainable on the Original Side of the High Court, and (ii) whether the show cause notice for excise duty could survive when it was founded on an explanation to the exemption notification that had been struck down and on a deeming fiction treating branded footwear as manufactured by the petitioners.

Issue (i): Whether the writ petition was maintainable on the Original Side of the High Court.

Analysis: The petitioners had their registered office, plant and buildings in Bombay, and the dispute could not be treated as arising exclusively outside the territorial limits of the Court merely because the notice was issued from Agra and related to factories there. The objection was also declined because the petition had remained pending for years and a belated transfer to the Appellate Side would serve no useful purpose.

Conclusion: The objection to maintainability was rejected, in favour of the petitioners.

Issue (ii): Whether the show cause notice for excise duty could survive when it was founded on an explanation to the exemption notification that had been struck down and on a deeming fiction treating branded footwear as manufactured by the petitioners.

Analysis: The notice proceeded on the basis that footwear purchased from independent manufacturers and bearing the petitioners' brand name could be deemed to have been manufactured by or on their behalf under the impugned explanation to the notification. Once that explanation had been struck down, the Department could not sustain the notice on that footing, nor could the notice be split up to support a different case not actually pursued in the reply. In these circumstances, the notice lacked legal foundation.

Conclusion: The show cause notice was invalid and liable to be struck down, in favour of the petitioners.

Final Conclusion: The writ petition succeeded, the impugned show cause notices were quashed, and no separate relief was required in respect of the already invalidated explanatory clause.

Ratio Decidendi: A show cause notice cannot be sustained where its legal foundation is the very explanation to an exemption notification that has been invalidated, and an excise notice based on a deeming fiction cannot be salvaged by recasting it into a different case not pursued in the proceedings.

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