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58 EXCISE LAW TIMES [ Vol. 373

30. Vide letter dated 6-6-2017, the petitioner requested the respondent
No. 4 - Commissioner of Customs, Kandla, to allow benefits under the MEIS on
the shipping bills in case the ‘declaration of intent’ was not mentioned on exports
made prior to 1-6-2015, whereupon the petitioner was advised/informed to
comply with the amendment in the form of conversion of shipping bills from free
to MEIS, whereafter, the petitioner applied for conversion of shipping bill.
31. Subsequently, vide communication dated 18/19-7-2017, the peti-
tioner was informed that the shipping bills are required to be amended by the
competent authority under Section 149 of the Act and was requested to approach
the proper officer of Customs under Section 149 of the Act, whereupon the peti-
tioner, on 1-8-2017, requested the competent authority to amend the shipping
bills under Section 149 of the Act at the earliest.
32. Thus, the respondents had not informed the petitioner immediately
to get the shipping bills converted into one under the MEIS. It was only after a lot
of inter se communication, that the petitioner was advised to get the shipping
bills amended and converted to MEIS shipping bills. Upon the petitioner making
such application for amendment, after prolonged inter se communications be-
tween the respondents as to who had the jurisdiction to decide said application,
the same came to be turned down on the ground that the application for
amendment had been made beyond three months as stipulated in Circular
36/2010-Customs dated 23rd September, 2010.
33. Circular 36/2010-Customs dated 23rd September, 2010 provides for
conversion of free shipping bills to Advance Authorisation/DEPB/Drawback
shipping bills and from one export promotion scheme to another. Clause (a) of
paragraph 3 thereof provides that the conversion may be allowed subject to the
conditions laid down thereunder. Condition (a) thereof reads thus : “Request for
conversion is made by the exporter within three months of the date of the Let Export Or-
der (LEO)”. From paragraph 4 of the circular, the reason for providing such time
limit appears to be that free shipping bills (shipping bills not filed under any ex-
port promotion scheme) are subject to ‘nil’ examination norms.
34. In the facts of the present case, as noticed earlier, it is not the case of
the respondents that the petitioner is not otherwise covered by Circular No.
36/2010-Customs, dated 23-9-2010. The sole ground on which the application has
been rejected is for non-compliance of condition (a) of paragraph 3 of the said
circular, namely that the application has been filed beyond a period of three
months from the date of filing the Let Export Order.
35. At this juncture, it may be apposite to refer to the decision of the
Delhi High Court in Kedia (Agencies) Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner of Customs, 2017
(348) E.L.T. 634 (Del.), on which reliance has been placed by the Learned Advo-
cate for the petitioner, wherein the question that arose for consideration was :
“Did the CESTAT fall into error in upholding the denial of the petitioner’s claim for
amendment of its shipping document under Section 149 of the Customs Act.” The Court
held thus :
“7. In the present case, the appellant had been consistently dealing with
the same goods and exporting them previously for over three years. The
pre-condition of a declaration along with the relative forms, for grant of
benefit was introduced on 1-4-2008 through an amendment to the Hand-
book of Procedures. It is now settled law that the provisions of the Foreign
Trade (Development & Regulation) Act, 1992, the rules or regulations

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