Refund claim - Period of limitation - Doctrine of merger -...

Refund claim - Period of limitation - Doctrine of merger - importer having registered a ‘Protest’ - The Tribunal held that, "the doctrine of merger" implies that the order passed by a lower authority would lose its finality and efficacy in favour of an order passed by a higher authority before whom correctness of such an order may have been assailed in appeal or revision. Hence once an order is passed in a matter where a protest is vacated by the issue of an order by the proper officer the second proviso to section 27(1) ceases to apply and section 27(1B)(b) takes over.