TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (8) TMI 110
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....Emirates and the Republic of India dated 18 February 2022 and operationalized through the Notification No. 39/2022-Customs (N.T.) dated 30 April 2022 ("Origin Rules"). The Appellant also submitted Certificates of Origin (COOs) bearing Nos. 2791372 and 2791284 dated 27 April 2022 obtained from the Ministry of Economy, UAE, as a pre-condition for availing the benefit under the said Origin Rules. 1.1. Pending clearance of the subject goods, the Appellant requested the authorities for provisional assessment of the said goods as the demurrage certificates were not available with the Appellant. During this reassessment, the Authorities withheld the clearance of the said goods and questioned the COOs submitted by the Appellant. Meanwhile, the Appellant requested for provisional release of the said goods vide its letter dated 11 May 2022. 1.2. Show Cause Notice dated 15 June 2022 was issued to the Appellant under Section 124 of the Customs Act, 1962, proposing to deny the preferential benefit and reassess the aforesaid BOEs at merit rate on the purported grounds that the COOs were not in the prescribed format, the consignee was named as the Singaporean subsidiary i.e., HPL Global Pte....
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.... of the Appellant. 1.7. Aggrieved by the de novo order, the Appellant preferred an appeal. However, the Ld. Commissioner of Customs (Appeals) passed the Impugned Order dated 25 August 2025, upholding the Adjudicating Authority's decision. The Appellate Authority has held that a correct COO must be present at the time of import itself and submission or correction at a later stage cannot cure the defect which existed at the time of filing of the BOEs. The Appellate Authority also rendered a finding that a certificate be reissued only if a valid COO was produced at the time of import. The Appellate Authority also alleged misdeclaration and suppression. Consequently, the demands, confiscation, and penalties were confirmed. 1.8. Aggrieved against the confirmation of differential customs duty along with interest and penalty in the impugned order, the appellant has filed this appeal. 2. The submissions of the Appellant are summarized as under: A. The Ld. Appellate Authority has erred in denying the benefit of preferential duty benefit to the Appellant even when the revised/rectified COOs in the prescribed format were duly submitted by the Appellant within the prescri....
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....pretation is fundamentally flawed. The said Instruction explicitly covers scenarios where preferential treatment was not extended due to "procedural discrepancies" and categorically states that the importer does not lose the right to claim the benefit upon subsequent submission of a valid COO within the stipulated timeframe, provided the origin of the product is not in dispute. A.4 Further, the Appellant submits that, being a bona fide importer, they submitted COOs dated 27 April 2022 which were issued by the competent authorities in a tentative format prescribed under the CEPA Agreement dated 18 February 2022. Despite diligently following the mandate of the law, the Ld. Adjudicating Authority has adopted an interpretation that creates a legal absurdity in so far as it places the Appellant in a worse off position than an importer who does not submit a Certificate of Origin at the time of import at all. A.5 Reliance in this regard is placed on the judgement of the Hon'ble Tribunal in the case of Okaya Power Limited v. Commissioner of Central Excise and Customs, Chandigarh [2017 (356) E.L.T. 241 (Tri. - Chan.)] wherein at the time of filing of the Bill of Entry, the....
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....rule. It empowers the proper officer to refuse preferential treatment without verification in specific limited circumstances, such as an unauthenticated alteration and mandates that the specific certificate be marked as "INAPPLICABLE". B.3 However, the aforesaid 'notwithstanding' clause cannot be read independently of the Origin Rules framed under Section 5 of the CTA. Reading Section 28DA(10) in absolute isolation to permanently extinguish an importer's right to the preferential benefit would render the procedural flexibilities expressly provided under Rules 15(10), 15(11), 26(3), and 27 of the Origin Rules entirely otiose. It is a cardinal principle of statutory interpretation that domestic procedural safeguards and rules operationalizing an international treaty must be read harmoniously. B.4 The act of a proper officer marking a specific, defective certificate as "INAPPLICABLE" under Section 28DA(10) merely invalidates that particular piece of paper; it does not place a permanent embargo on the importer's substantive right to the exemption. Instead, it triggers the importer's right under the Origin Rules to approach the foreign issuing autho....
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....) TMI 912]. D. Misdeclaration and suppression cannot be alleged against the Appellant, when the Appellant made constant endeavors to obtain the revised certificates and the Department failed to discharge its statutory obligation of verifying the Certificates of Origin D.1. The Appellant submits that it is an AEO-T3 status holder, which is the highest tier of accreditation granted by the Customs Department only to entities with a flawless and proven track record of legal compliance. From the very inception of the import, the Appellant acted in a transparent and bona fide manner by uploading the original COOs on the e-Sanchit portal for the assessment of the Bills of Entry. There was absolutely no concealment or suppression of any document or fact from the Customs authorities. D.2. Further, the Certificates were issued by the competent authorities of UAE. The Appellant had no role whatsoever in the format adopted by the sovereign foreign authority on 27 April 2022, which was notably prior to the issuance of the Origin Rules in India (30 April 2022). As soon as the Customs authorities raised an objection regarding the formatting of the COOs and the handwritt....
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....ement ("CEPA") between United Arab Emirates and the Republic of India dated 18 February 2022 and operationalized through the Notification No. 39/2022- Customs (N.T.) dated 30 April 2022 ("Origin Rules"). The Appellant also submitted Certificates of Origin (COOs) bearing Nos. 2791372 and 2791284 dated 27 April 2022 obtained from the Ministry of Economy, UAE. We find that the initial COOs dated 27 April 2022 submitted by the Appellant were invalidated by the Authorities on the following counts. (i) The COOs were not in the format prescribed under the Origin Rules. (ii) The consignee in the COOs was shown as M/s HPL Global Pte Ltd., Singapore, instead of the Appellant, and the invoice details did not match. (iii) A handwritten endorsement was made on the COOs by M/s HPL Global Pte Ltd., Singapore, in favour of the Appellant, which was not authenticated by the issuing authority. (iv) The COOs were issued on 27 April 2022, which pre-dated the effective date of the exemption notification and the Origin Rules (i.e., 01 May 2022). 5.1. We find that the grounds raised by the department for rejecting the COOs are legally not sustainable, due to the foll....
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....022, well before the adjudication and reassessment of the impugned BOEs. 5.3. From the revised COO, we find that the said COOs were issued within the permitted period of 12 months from the shipment and clearly mentioned that they were "issued retrospectively". However, we find that the Ld. Appellate Authority and the Ld. Adjudicating Authority have brushed aside the said certificates based on the contention that any later submission or correction of COO cannot cure the defect in the COO submitted earlier. 5.4. We find that the CEPA between India and the UAE is a sovereign bilateral treaty. To operationalise this treaty, the Government of India exercised its powers under Section 5 of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 (CTA) to notify the Origin Rules. These Rules constitute a complete, self-contained code governing the eligibility, certification, and procedural flexibilities for claiming preferential tariffs. The Origin Rules expressly permit the replacement of an erroneous certificate with a newly issued revised/rectified Certificate of Origin (Rule 15(10)), allow for the retrospective issuance of a belated Certificate of Origin (Rule 15(11)), and explicitly permit an importer to s....
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.... 9 of the Certificate of Origin, with the issuing authority also recording the reasons in writing on the exceptional circumstances due to which the certificate was issued retrospectively. The Certificate of Origin can be issued retrospectively but no longer than twelve months from the date of shipment. 2.2 Further, rule 21(3) provides for claiming of refund of excess duties paid in cases where a product would have qualified as an originating product when it was imported into the territory. But preferential treatment was not extended at the time of import:- (3) Each Party shall, in accordance with its laws, provide that where a product would have qualified as an originating product when it was imported into the territory of that Party, the importer of the product may. Within a period specified by the laws of the importing Party, apply for a refund of any excess duties paid as a result of the product not having been accorded preferential treatment. 2.3 These provisions indicate that where preferential treatment was not claimed or extended at the time of import, the importer does not lose the right to claim the benefit upon subsequent submission of a valid C....
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....OOs that were not in the prescribed format; however, the claim for duty exemption was allowed when the assessee produced the revised COOs in the prescribed format. [Refer Para 6]. Similar views have been consistently echoed by the judicial fora, holding that substantive benefits cannot be denied due to curable procedural infractions. This view has been held in the case of M/s Pradeep Phosphates Limited v. Commissioner of Customs [2024 (6) TMI 913 - CESTAT Kolkata], wherein this Tribunal specifically held that subsequent compliance with the COO format conditions of an exemption notification entitles the assessee to the benefit. 5.8. We observe that by submitting the revised COOs dated 07 November 2022, the Appellant acted strictly in accordance with the law. We do not find any infirmity in the revised COOs submitted by the Appellant. We observe that the Lower authorities have read the Section 28DA (10) in absolute isolation to permanently extinguish an importer's right to the preferential benefit. We find that retrospective issue of COO has been expressly provided under Rules 15(10), 15(11), 26(3), and 27 of the Origin Rules. Thus, the said Rules cannot be interpreted in such....