TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2024 (11) TMI 1433
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....n (4) of Section 28 of the Customs Act, 1962 along with applicable interest under Section 28AA of the Customs Act, 1962. ii) I impose penalty of Rs. 1,22,87,551/- (Rupees One Crore Twenty-Two Lacs Eighty Seven Thousand Five Hundred Fifty-One Only) to M/s Khanna Traders & Engineers, D-26, Site-IV, Surajpur Industrial Area, Greater Noida-201308 under Section 114A of the Customs Act, 1962." 2.1 Appellant has filed self assessment of Bill of Entries at ICD Dadri, Greater Noida for clearance of imported "Tin Ingots" classifiable under Customs Tariff Heading (CTH) 80011090 from Malaysia manufactured by M/s Malaysia Smelting Corporation, Malaysia. The imported goods attract BCD @ 5% and CVD @ 12.5%. 2.2 Appellant self assessed duty under the provisions of Section 17 (1) of Customs Act and claimed benefit of free trade agreement under Notification No. 046/2011-Cus dated 01.06.2011. Accordingly, NIL BCD was paid because of the said notification. 2.3 After certain inquiries made by the DRI, it was found that the benefit of Notification No. 046/2011-Cus dated 01.06.2011 was not admissible to the appellant and this resulted in short payment of duty to the tune ....
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....ugned order following has been recorded:- "4.1 Personal hearings to M/s Khanna Traders & Engineers, D-26, Site-IV, Surajpur Industrial Area, Greater Noida 201306, was granted on 25.06.2020. Shri Rohit Khanna, Plant Manager and Shri Sanjay Kumar, Account Manager have appeared on behalf of the Importer Noticee and stated that they had not received the SCN till date, therefore, a copy of the SCN was provided to them on 25.06.2020. 4.2 Further, Party requested one month time to prepare their reply and has agreed that a reply would be submitted by 4th Aug 2020. They have also agreed that, if they fall to submit reply within the stipulated time, the matter may be decided ex-parte based on available documents. 5. DISCUSSIONS & FINDINGS:- 5.1 I have carefully gone through the Show Cause Notice Issued to M/s Khanna Traders & Engineers and other documents related to the case, evidences on record and submission made during the personal hearing. Since the party has failed to submit their reply by 04.08.2020 as assured at the time of personal hearing, I take up the case for ex-parte decision on the basis of documents available on record. Taking up the Show Ca....
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....7815.1 5510476.3 5882002 6526842.1 5510476 Diff. Duty (in Rs. ) 1869356.357 2299951.497 1909337.424 2038067.969 2261500.122 1909337 Total Rs. 12287550. 78 4.6 The error in computation of demand is visible in the above table as one bill of entry no.6239379 appearing in column 4 & 7 of the table. 4.7 We do not find any merits in the appeal filed by the revenue to the extent that interest amount should have been added to the duty short paid while imposition of penalty under Section 114A of the Act. Tribunal and even High Court has repeatedly emphasized that the word used in the section "or" and not "and". In case of Sony sales Corporation [2021 (376) ELT 472 (Kar)] Hon'ble Karnataka high Court has held as follows: 10. We have considered the submissions made on both sides and have perused the record. The solitary issue, which arises for consideration in this appeal is with regard to interpretation of provisions of Section 114A of the Act. Before proceeding further, we may take note of the well settled legal principles with regard to the principles of statutory interpretation, which is reproduced below for the facility....
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.... The expression used is "or" which is disjunctive between duty or interest and further use of expression as the case may be clearly suggest that aforesaid provision refers to two different persons and two different situations viz., one in which a person will be liable to duty and in other he may be liable to pay interest only and provides that in both the situations the person liable to duty would be liable to penalty equal to duty and person liable to interest would be liable to penalty equal to interest. Therefore, in view of law laid down by Constitution Bench of Supreme Court, the word "or" cannot be interpreted as "and". 13. So far as reliance placed by Learned Counsel for the appellant on the clarification issued by Central Board of Excise and Customs dated 20-9-2002 is concerned, suffice it to say that the aforesaid clarification cannot be contrary to the plain language of the provision. For yet another reason, no interference is called for as the Tribunal has taken a similar view in the case of B. Suresh Vasudev Baliga (supra) and there is no material on record to show that the aforesaid order was challenged by the Revenue. Therefore, in the facts of the case, the ....