- (1.) Chased by the phantom of octroi duty, trying to save itself from the clutches of Jaipur Municipal Corporation ('JMC', for short), running from pillar to post to seek justice, the petitioner, the National Engineering Industries Ltd., has sought the refuge of this Court. Aggrieved by the order dated 6.3.1997, passed by the Octroi Commissioner, Jaipur Municipal Corporation ('the learned Commissioner', for short), whereby the learned Commissioner has dismissed the eleven appeals, filed by the petitioner, by a common order and has upheld the octroi duty imposed by the JMC, the petitioner has knocked at the doors of this Court.
(2.) This case has had a convoluted history: the petitioner is a company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act, 1956. It carries on the business of manufacturing and sale of various products inter alia axle boxes and ball bearings and roller bearings. It has a factory at Jaipur for carrying on the aforesaid activities. Both, for the finished product and for manufacturing various components of the bearings, the Company requires various machineries. Some of these machineries were not available in India. Consequently, the petitioner imported these machineries from abroad. These machineries included radial clearance checking machine, grinding machine for ball bearings, lapping machine for ball bearings etc. It also included indigenous machines called H.M.T. Vertical Machining Center. When these machines entered the municipal limits of Jaipur City, the JMC required the petitioner to pay octroi duty as per Item No. 69(e) and/or Item No. 74 of the Octroi Schedule dated 5.12.1991. Item No. 69(e) deals with "VCR, VCP and its cassettes, remote control and its parts, X-ray machine, electronic machine and its parts, chemotherapy machine Gama, Camera Sonography, CT-Scanning ECG apparatus-and other machines of this type or their parts." Item No. 69(e) prescribes an octroi duty of 1% of the value of the machine. On the other hand, Item No. 74(a) deals with "wall clocks, table clocks, simple or electronically run clocks, glass, chain, and other parts of clocks and other items with computer or computer run machine." Item No. 74 prescribes an octroi duty of 1% of the value of goods.
(3.) The petitioner resisted the classification of the machines being imported and claimed that the correct classification is one under Item No. 109 of the Octroi Schedule. Item No. 109 deals with "Every type of machinery, their parts, other tube, counter scale and weighting machine." According to Item No. 109, the excisable duty is Rs. 50 per quintal. Before the Octroi Officers, it was the case of the petitioner that the machines were general machines which at the relevant time were excisable to an octroi duty only at the rate of Rs. 50/- per quintal. However, the Octroi Officers passed certain assessment order while rejecting the stand taken by the petitioner.;