Supreme Court Says Export Incentives Can’t Be Rejected on Technicalities :Substance Over Form
The Supreme Court held that an inadvertent procedural error in shipping bills, duly corrected under Section 149 of the Customs Act, cannot extinguish an exporter's substantive right to claim benefits under the MEIS scheme. The Court emphasized that beneficial export promotion policies must be construed liberally, and administrative rigidity cannot override statutory entitlements.
Facts Of The Case:
The appellant, an exporter of corn starch, filed 54 shipping bills electronically through a customs broker for exports made between July and October 2017. The broker inadvertently failed to change the default declaration for claiming incentives under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) from “No” to “Yes”. This clerical error prevented the automatic transmission of the bill...