Full Judgment
2. The claim was rejected by the Assistant Collector by his order dated nil despatched on 20-1-1979 on the ground that the notification on which the appellants placed reliance exempted only computers and sub-assembly thereof, and since the Department of Electronics in their letter dated 27-6-1978 had characterised these goods as "Computer Peripheral", they could not be covered by the said notification.
3. The Appellate Collector also dismissed the appeal filed by the appellants against this rejection of their refund claim by the Assistant Collector, by his order dated 16-5-1979, on the ground that the extract from the "Data Communication Dictionery" giving definition of "Computer Sub-system" and "Sub-system Peripheral" indicated that whereas a sub-system comprises of one or more peripheral systems, a peripheral does not necessarily comprise a subsystem.
4. The appellants filed revision petition to the Central Government against this dismissal of their appeal, pleading that the Appellate Collector has taken an erroneous view by holding that a peripheral was not covered by the term computer sub-system and as such not entitled to the benefit of exemption notification, and that they had placed abundant material on record to show that the item imported by them described as "Floppy Disk Drive Model 511" was nothing but computer sub-system, and that the refund claim was wrongly rejected.
5. It is this revision petition which has been taken up today as an appeal, having been transferred to the Tribunal under the provisions of Section 131B(2) of the Customs Act, Shri V.R. Gandhi, Customs House Agent appeared for the appellant whereas Department was represented by Shri Mahesh Kumar, SDR. Besides referring to the material already on record, the appellants' representative produced photo copy of the letter dated 9th October, 1979 issued under the signatures of Senior Scientific Officer (G) of the Department of Electronics, Government of India, certifying that the said Department considers that the product appearing with the nomenclature "Floppy Disk Drive", was a "computer sub-system". This thus takes the matter beyond any doubt about the entitlement of the appellant to the benefit of notification No. 272/76, as amended by notification No. 47/79. Not only that, appellants' representative produced a copy of one other letter, issued under the signatures of the Deputy Secretary to Government of India, Department of Electronics bearing the date 2nd May, 1980, to the effect that the Department had considered the scope of the expression "Computer Sub-systems", appearing in the aforesaid notifications, and had decided that the "Computer peripheral" unit would be covered by the expression "Computer Sub-system" used in the said notifications, and that this clarification would apply to the existing notification No. 47/79 dated 1-3-1979 as well as earlier notification No. 272/76 dated 2-8-1976. In view of this, we do not think that the matter admits of any doubt.
6. We, therefore, think it to be a fit case to allow the appeal. The appeal is, accordingly allowed, and it is directed that consequential relief by way of refund be given to the appellants, within a period of two months from the date of communication of this order.