TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1983 (12) TMI 318
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....as granted quota certificate by the Government of India and on the strength of the same, the petitioner secured from time to time import licences and quota certificates enabling him to import into India various goods in accordance with the policy laid down by the Government. The petitioner was holding eleven quota certificates of the aggregate value of Rs. 8,38,45/- in the year 1977. The quota certificates were for import of items covered under Serial Nos. 293, 295 and 297 of Part IV, Section IV of Import Trade Control Policy for the year April 1976-March, 1977. The subject under these three items was 'Motor Vehicle Parts'. 2. The Import Trade Control Policy for the period commencing from April 1977 to March 1978 grouped items of mo....
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....p; (4) Import of banned types of ball, roller tapered, roler and needle roller bearings, bushes, cages, needle roller assemblies mentioned in Appendix 14 and rollers/needle rollers mentioned in remarks column against Heading 84.62(5) will not be allowed as spares or as CKD parts. (5) Import of any types of agricultural steel disc will not be permitted. (6) Parts of Hydraulic Lifts which form an integral built up mechanism of tractors will be classified as spare parts of the tractors. (7) Quota licences will not also be valid for the import of items mentioned in List I of Appendix 26. Items mentioned in Lis....
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....bruary 21, 1979, the petitioner was informed that the decision already communicated by the Joint Chief Controller of Imports and Exports, Bombay, cannot be revised. The petitioner has thereafter approached this Court by filing this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. 4. Shri Desai, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner, raised two contentions to claim that the petitioner is entitled to the grant of licence for importing spare parts of crawler/agricultural tractors and for tractor drawn agricultural implements. The first submission of the learned counsel is that though the quota certificates obtained by the petitioners were for an item of motor vehicle parts, in accordance with the Import Policy o....
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.... licence in respect of other item. Shri Desai relied upon certain observations in the preface to the Import Policy of April 1977-March 1978, and claimed that the Government's policy was to liberalise and simplify the import of the goods. Paragraph 8 of the preface reads as under: "Presentation of the policy in this book is different from earlier books in certain respects. The presentation in Section II relating to policy for individual items has been completely revised in order to adopt the revised ITC classification based on BTN classification. Various appendices have been re-arranged. Their number has been reduced from 90 to 57. Some of the important appendices appear with different numbers in this book. For instance, the old Appendix ....
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.... thereof. ... 4% Paragraph 10 of this Appendix 26 provides that the licences issued for RITO Serial No. 87.04/06 will not be valid for the import of certain items. Reading these two paragraphs together, it does appear that the Government policy or the intention of the Government was that the quota licence issued for import of motor vehicle parts is valid only for motor vehicle parts and not other items, like spare parts of crawler and agricultural tractors. In my judgment, the claim of the petitioner that he is entitled to grant of licence for crawler/agricultural tractors although the quota certificate issued to him was only for motor vehicle parts cannot be accepted. Shri Desai tried to draw support by pointing out certain other ent....
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.... for import of parts of petrol, gas and kerosene engines. It was urged that this action on the part of the Department would establish that the Department has also understood the new import policy of April 1977 to mean that the importer is entitled to apply for licence for any of the items falling under a particular heading. In answer to this submission, Shri R.V. Desai, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the respondents, relied upon the averments in paragraph 6 of the return dated February 7, 1980 filed by Shri G.R. Nair, Deputy Chief Controller of Imports and Exports, Bombay. The respondents claim that the licence was granted to the petitioner due to mistake or inadvertence of the officer concerned and such a mistake or inadvertence, i....