Pharmaceutical export procedures distinguish manufacturers, merchant exporters, and exporters of unapproved, new, or banned drugs. Manufacturers of approved products upload prescribed documents through e-Sanchit and generally need no separate Assistant Drugs Controller clearance. Merchant exporters require a regulatory No Objection Certificate, on which Customs ordinarily relies without duplicate document verification. Exporters of unapproved, new, and banned drugs must obtain a CDSCO certificate before seeking a Manufacturing Licence, ensure Shipping Bill details match it, and obtain amendments for buyer or purchase-order changes. A limited transitional relaxation applies until 30 September 2026.

Customs administration of temporarily imported duty-free containers is being digitised through electronic monitoring and automated Continuity Bond management. Manual Container Movement Permission is discontinued, while manually executed Continuity Bonds must be registered in the Indian Customs EDI System for automated bond debits and credits through electronic manifests. Pending complete automation, stakeholders must submit electronic quarterly bond and container-status reports. Bond holders remain responsible for timely re-export, accurate records and fulfilment of exemption conditions; non-compliance may lead to bond enforcement, duty recovery with interest and penal proceedings.

Admission of cheque execution triggers statutory presumptions of consideration and discharge of legally enforceable liability in dishonour proceedings. Those presumptions require cogent rebuttal evidence; an unsupported claim that a blank cheque was given as security, a delayed demand for its return, failure to respond to the demand notice, and unproved allegations of the complainant's financial incapacity do not displace them. Revisional jurisdiction remains supervisory rather than appellate: concurrent factual findings should not be overturned by reassessing evidence unless they are perverse, grossly erroneous, unsupported by material, omit relevant material, or reflect arbitrary discretion. The stated principles support restoration of the concurrent conviction for cheque dishonour.

Effective service of the material show-cause notice and assessment order is necessary to provide notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond. Where the assessee was unavailable at its principal place of business, the later notice could not be served, and the registered postal cover containing the assessment order was returned, the assessee did not receive either the notice preceding assessment or the assessment order. The resulting denial of notice and opportunity to respond violates principles of natural justice. Such an assessment must be set aside and remitted for fresh adjudication after due notice.

Revisional jurisdiction cannot reopen a concluded assessment merely because the authority prefers a different applicable determination order; where the appellate authority considered the relevant exemption notifications and its order attained finality, such revision is an impermissible change of opinion. The analysis further states that processed and quality-tested certified seeds developed under a supervised research and development programme for farmers' sowing qualify for exemption where they are non-imported and intended for sowing. On these stated grounds, the Tribunal's deletion of additional tax, interest and penalty was sustained.

Inevitable coal gas arising during coke manufacture is a by-product rather than a final product, so the payment mechanism for exempted final products under Rule 6(3) of the Cenvat Credit Rules does not apply. Coke produced on job work and returned to the principal manufacturer for further manufacture is neither sold by the job worker nor consumed by or on behalf of that job worker; captive-consumption valuation under Rule 10A(iii) read with Rule 8 is therefore inapplicable. Valuation based on raw-material cost and job-work conversion charges, adjusted for by-product realisations, supports the duty treatment.

An excise-duty concession subject to a condition that no Cenvat credit be taken is unavailable once credit is recorded and availed in statutory returns. The condition applies to taking credit, not merely using it, and must be strictly complied with by the claimant. Non-utilisation, later reversal, lapse on transition to GST, or migration of credit cannot retrospectively cure the breach or restore eligibility for the concessional rate. Where prohibited credit was availed alongside the concession, differential duty, statutory interest and penalty may follow; audit detection and return filing do not preclude invocation of the extended period.

Weld mesh manufactured exclusively as identifiable top, bottom, side, door and partition components of poultry battery cages is described as classifiable as parts of poultry-keeping machinery under CETH 84369100. The competing entry for iron and steel structures applies to structural articles of the specified nature, and the text states that no convincing material or reasoning established that specialised weld-mesh cage components fall within that entry. An earlier poultry-equipment decision was considered inapposite because subsequent appellate proceedings accepted classification under CETH 84369100. Accordingly, rejection of that classification and proposed classification under CETH 73089090 are described as unsustainable.

Service-tax demands based on third-party income-tax data cannot invoke the extended limitation period where filed ST-3 returns and departmental records disclose the relevant receipts and negate suppression. Manpower-supply service tax paid by recipients under the applicable reverse-charge mechanism cannot be recovered again from the service provider. Timely filed returns also negate late-fee liability. Where the principal demand fails on limitation and merits, consequential interest and penalties have no independent basis and are unsustainable. The service-tax proceedings were nullified, leaving no fiscal liability on the assessee.

A demand dropped in original adjudication became final because Revenue's appeal did not challenge the classification of office-building works for Haryana State Warehousing Corporation as works contract service; it could not therefore be confirmed on appeal. Subcontracted works contract services for canal, dam and irrigation projects were exempt where the principal contractor's works were exempt and the services fell within the subcontractor exemption under Serial No. 29(h) of Notification No. 25/2012-ST. The demand could not be sustained by classifying those works as manpower supply services. The service-tax demand failed on both grounds, without deciding limitation.

Extended limitation for recovery of service tax on weighbridge-service receipts cannot be invoked where the assessee was registered, regularly filed returns, paid tax on other taxable services, and recorded the receipts in its financial records. The material did not establish suppression of facts with intent to evade tax; the non-payment was treated as a bona fide mistake in a dispute involving legal interpretation and detected during audit. The service-tax demand was therefore time-barred.

Service tax on manpower supply services was payable entirely by the recipient under reverse charge from 1 April 2015, leaving the service provider not liable to collect or deposit the tax. Where the Department retained tax deposited by the provider and also recovered tax on the same services from the recipient, retention of the duplicate collection amounted to unjust enrichment. The provider's delayed awareness, arising only on receipt of the recipient's debit note, constituted exceptional circumstances in which statutory limitation could not defeat restitution. A refund of the wrongly retained amount was therefore available despite limitation and notwithstanding an appellate remedy.

Closure of the corporate insolvency resolution process was considered appropriate because no claims were received after the public announcement and the parties had entered discharge arrangements. In the absence of a subsisting claimant or other impediment to termination, the process could be closed. The discharge arrangements supported release of the bank lien and disbursement in accordance with those arrangements. The impugned order was set aside, the insolvency process was closed, and the bank lien was withdrawn for the agreed disbursement.

Insolvency proceedings based on an operational creditor's application cannot continue where the claimed debt has been fully settled, the creditor consents to reversal of admission, and no other creditor claim remains unpaid. A genuine dispute over transportation-charge billing, including the distance measurements used for invoicing, existed before the statutory demand notice and independently precluded sustaining the application. The only other claim received during the process, for provident-fund dues, was also discharged in full. The insolvency application therefore lacked any subsisting creditor claim requiring continuation of the process.

Section 96(4) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, effective from 26 May 2026, excludes insolvency-resolution applications concerning personal guarantors to corporate debtors from the Section 96 interim moratorium. The exclusion extends to applications already pending on that date because it operates on a continuing status and does not impair vested rights. Consequently, interim arbitral protection under Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act is available. Where arbitration agreements and indebtedness are undisputed, limited measures requiring asset disclosure and restraining dissipation of disclosed assets may protect the creditor pending arbitration, without directing any deposit.

An arbitral award constitutes a claim under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, and an award-holder is a creditor. Where the award-holder does not submit its claim in the corporate debtor's CIRP and the claim is excluded from the approved resolution plan, the claim is extinguished and a pending challenge to the award cannot revive it. Money deposited in court solely as security for a stay of award enforcement remains an asset of the corporate debtor because custody does not transfer ownership to the award-holder. Once the underlying claim is extinguished, the award-holder has no unconditional entitlement to the deposit, which is refundable with accrued interest to the corporate debtor.

Article 227 supervisory jurisdiction does not permit the High Court to pre-empt the NCLT's initial determination of objections to its jurisdiction, the maintainability of execution petitions, or the executability of an NCLAT order under the Companies Act. Those objections must be pursued before the NCLT. Stay of the execution proceedings was also declined because related civil appeals were pending before the Supreme Court, which had granted only limited interim relief. Any further stay was to be sought in those appeals before the Supreme Court. The petitioners were therefore directed to pursue their substantive objections before the NCLT and interim relief before the Supreme Court.

Maintains focus on the maintainability of an appeal from an ex parte ad interim order and a director's standing in corporate governance disputes despite lacking shareholding. It addresses the statutory meaning and removal of a director, the bar on civil court jurisdiction, and whether absence of locus before the NCLT permits recourse to civil courts. It also considers oppression and mismanagement remedies, waiver of eligibility conditions, and the requirements of a prima facie case, balance of convenience, irreparable injury, and clean hands for interim relief.

Penalty for abetment of attempted prohibited export requires admissible evidence of a positive act of assistance or knowing participation. The CESTAT Bangalore found no evidence that the exporter, its managing partner, employees, or the customs house agent loaded or tampered with the container, knew of substituted red sanders, or participated in clandestine stuffing; penalties were therefore set aside. Deficiencies in the confiscation order did not warrant remand because confiscation was unchallenged and no evidentiary basis existed to reconsider penalty against the customs house agent. The Department's appeal for de novo adjudication was dismissed.

Transfer of duty-free imported material to processors is not job work where they use independently procured principal inputs, issue tax invoices for intermediate goods, and adjust the imported material's value against the invoice price. Such arrangements constitute prohibited sale or transfer in breach of exemption conditions, supporting confiscation, duty recovery with interest, and penalty against the importing company. Import bonds remain enforceable until exemption conditions are fulfilled or the bonds are discharged; suppression of the sale as job work prevents the demand from being time-barred. A director knowingly involved in the diversion may be personally penalised under Section 112(a)(ii), with penalty reduced and its statutory basis specified.