- (1.) The Revenue assails a judgment and order of April 7, 2016 on a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution challenging a circular issued by the Central Board of Excise and Customs on May 9, 2013 and the consequential notices issued to the writ petitioner and steps taken against such petitioner.
(2.) The matter pertains to disposable sterilised dialysers. The writ petitioner deals in hollow fibre dialysers. Such equipment is at the heart of any dialising unit or artificial kidney as the purification of the blood is undertaken by such equipment. In the usual course, such equipment was claimed by the writ petitioner to be covered by Chapter 90 of Section XVIII of the first schedule to the Customs Tariff Act , 1975. The relevant section covers optical, photographic, cinematographic, measuring, checking precision surgical instruments and like products. Chapter 90 deals with optical, photographic, cinematographic, measuring, checking, precision, medical or surgical instruments and apparatus and the parts and accessories thereof. The second note to Chapter 90 provides that parts and accessories for machines, apparatus, instruments or articles of such chapter are to be classified according to, inter alia, the parts and accessories which are goods included in any of the headings of such chapter, other than certain specified exceptions.
(3.) Just as in other chapters, Chapter 90 carries a table which has five columns. The tariff item is described in numericals in the first column, the relevant product is described in detail in the second column, the unit of measurement is indicated in the third column and the rate of duty is specified in the fourth and the final column. There are groups of products which are bundled together and the broad groups all carry numbers like 9001, 9002, 9003 and the like in Chapter 90. The more specific nature of the goods is revealed in the further four digits assigned to the items. Under the 18th bundle in Chapter 90 covered by sub-heading 9018 dealing with instruments and appliances used in medical, surgical and the like, the writ petitioner's product is classified as renal dialysis equipment (artificial kidneys, kidney machines and dialisers) with the specific item number being 9018 9031. There is a broad heading within the group intituled "Renal Dialysis Equipment, blood transfusion apparatus and Haemofiltration instruments. " Under such heading, there are three classes of items all directly connected to renal dialysis.;