KARRACHI: Deciding about twenty constitution petitions filed by different importers of Toilet items, a division bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC) comprising Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Junaid Ghaffar on Tuesday observed that once a Valuation Ruling (VR) is issued it cannot be altered or modified by issuing a “Corrigendum”.
The bench was informed by the counsel for the petitioners that Directorate of Customs Valuation has made it a practice to issue corrigendum for charging the customs duty on higher side altering, modifying a Valuation Ruling decided under Section 25-a of the Customs Act 1969.
The petitioners maintained that Valuation Ruling is issued after a lengthy process involving the input of stake holders/ importer/exporters and hence using a short cut to change it is against the section 25 a of Customs Act 1969. They contended that a VR can be superseded by another VR following the procedure/complete exercise under section 25-a. They prayed the court to issue a permanent order restraining the Directorate of Valuation from this illegal practice.
The bench after hearing Kashif Nazir advocate, counsel for Appraisement, East and Haider Shaikh for Directorate of Customs Valuation reserved the judgment observing that VR cannot be altered by issuing a corrigendum.