The Central Board of Excise and Customs has decided to prescribe time limits for various activities following representations from the trade and recommendations from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The time limits are stiff for field formations and quite liberal for the adjudicating authorities.
The officers in charge of export oriented units have to clear on the same day the applications for acceptance of additional B-17 bond, broad-banding of goods, issuance of procurement certificates and CT3 certificates etc.
They can take at most one day for execution and acceptance of a B-17 bond, warehousing of raw materials, capital goods, consumables etc., issuance of re-warehousing certificates, renewal of job-work/ sub-contracting permission where there is no change in the application and so on.
They can take two days to give permission to re-export the rejected raw materials, capital goods etc and three days for extension or broad-banding of warehousing licences or broad-banding of licences.
Even somewhat complex matters like issuance of licences under Section 58 or Section 65 of the Customs Act, 1962, and permission of job-work must be granted within five days. Examination of export and re-export consignments should be done even with shorter notice than one day.
The CBEC says that the stipulated time period will be exclusive of holidays and that where any deficiency is found in the application, the proposed time period will apply only after rectification of the deficiency and re-submission of the complete application.
The field formations will surely find some fault or the other with the application and try to delay grant of permissions. Anyway, the stipulation of the time limits is better than leaving field formations to take decisions whenever they like. To that extent, it is a very welcome development.
Wherever cases are remanded for de-novo consideration, the CBEC wants to give six months or one year for passing orders according to the guidelines prescribed under Section 28 (2A) of the Customs Act, 1962. This is surely too long. Most remand cases are cases that have already been delayed for quite some time.
The CBEC should have not granted more than three months rather than asking the cases to be recorded as fresh receipts in the relevant records/registers maintained for monitoring adjudication. Even the six months/one-year time limits need not be adhered to if the supervisory officer allows more time to the adjudicating authority, says the CBEC.
A similar loophole is available with regards to adjudication of cases relating to seizure of assets or records. The commissioner gets one year, the assistant commissioner gets six months and a lesser officer gets three months. Yet these time limits need not be adhered to if the supervisory officer gives more time.
The CBEC has already issued instructions regarding time limits for payment of duty on confirmation on demand beyond which coercive action can be taken for recovery. The instructions relate to the excise cases. Now the CBEC says that the same time limits will apply to customs cases.
While the stipulation of time limits is better than not having time limits, the CBEC must address the basic issue, which is that most adjudicating officers are not serious about their work. It should think in terms of dedicating officers for adjudicating work and find ways to measure their output and quality.
