Full Judgment
2. This appeal coming up for orders upon perusing the records and upon hearing the arguments of Shri I. Arokiaswamy, representative of the appellant and upon hearing the arguments of Shri S.K. Choudhury, Senior Departmental Representative for the respondent, the Tribunal makes the following : 3. The present petition was filed before the Government of India as a revision application against the Order No. C48/102/80 dated 17-1-81 of the Appellate Collector of Customs, Madras, upholding the rejection of a claim for drawback of the appellant by the Assistant Collector of Customs (Drawback), Madras, in his Order No. C. 48/29'78-DBK dated 10-12-79/13-12-79. By virtue of Section 131B of the Customs Act, 1962, this has been transferred to the Tribunal to be heard as an appeal.
4. The Assistant Collector of Customs (Drawback) has rejected the appellant's claim for non-observance of Rule 1l(c)(iii) of the Customs and Central Excise (Duty Drawback) Rules, 1971 ; that a claim for drawback was not made at the time of export. It came out at the hearing that making of such a claim sets in motion certain checks and verifications which were not done in the present case. The appellant now presses for waiver of this provision and produces certain documents such as invoice and a certificate from the consignee to indicate that the bags in which granular quartz is said to have been shipped were new. In support of the plea of waiver, the representative of the appellant stated that in a case in which he had himself appeared (no details furnished), the Appellate Collector had waived the requirements of Rule No. 11 (c) (iii) referred to above. We note that under Rule 15 of the Rules, the Central Government when "satisfied that in relation to the export of any goods, the exporter or his authorised agent has, for reasons beyond his control, failed to comply with any of, the provisions of these rules and has thus not been entitled to drawback, it may, after considering the representations, if any, made by such exporter or agent, and for reasons to be recorded in writing exempt such exporter or agent from the provisions of such rules and allow drawback in respect of such goods." 5. We"pointedly"enquired of both the] representative" of the appellant and of the Department as to whether this power of relaxation is exercisable by an authority subordinate to the Central Government.
There seems to be no delegation. The rule-making authority viz., the Central Government has by Rule 15 reserved to itself the power to relax any of the rules in special circumstances and for special reasons. We do not think that such a power is exercisable by a subordinate authority like the Appellate Collector and if in any particular case it was done so, we should think that it was done without jurisdiction. The claim for drawback has been correctly rejected by the Assistant Collector and the Appellate Collector. The appeal is dismissed.