KARACHI: A custom appellate bench of High Court of Sindh comprising Justice Muhammd Junaid Ghaffar and Justice Adnan-ul-Karim Memon dismissed eight (8) Special Custom Reference Applications (SCRAs) filed by the Collector of Customs through Additional Collector of Customs MCC Appraisement (West), Customs House, Karachi.
The appellant department was represented by Khalid Mehmood Rajpar Advocate, while respondent were represented by Imran Iqbal Khan, Aneel Zia and Saima Syed, Advocates.
The Applicant department has impugned a common Judgment dated 09.01.2020 passed by the Customs Appellate Tribunal in Customs Appeal Nos.K-659/2019 to K666/2019 and had proposed various questions of law.
SHC after initial hearing admitted the SCRAs for regular hearing and selected a number of questions of law porposed by the appellant side including question that Whether keeping in view the law settled by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of Pakistan in the case of Collector of Customs V/s. Syed Rehan Ahmed (2017 PTD 381), in the absence of any Division Bench, constituted under sub-section (2) & (3) of Section 194-C of the Act, the learned Member (judicial) of the Appellate Tribunal, sitting singly, has erred in law to decide the appeal/pass the impugned Judgment without having jurisdiction?.
The bench after detailed arguments reached to the conclusion that Applicant department has failed to appreciate the law; rather has misunderstood the relevant provision inasmuch as admittedly, the duty, tax, penalty or fine in each individual Appeal before the Tribunal was not above Rs. 5.0 Million; hence the provision of Section 194-C (3) of the Customs Act 1969, which requires such matters to be decided by a Two Member Bench will not be attracted.
To other questions of law the bench noted that apparently these questions have no discussed in the impugned order and in fact were never raised before the Tribunal.
“No supporting documents, including any cross objections so filed before the Tribunal have been shown to us. It is pertinent to note that the established law on this point is that the High Court will only consider question of law which has arisen out of order of the Tribunal or question which was raised before the Tribunal and was dealt with by the Tribunal or question which was not raised before the Tribunal but was dealt with by the Tribunal or that question which was raised but has not been dealt with by the Tribunal. Therefore, these questions do not arise out of the order of the Tribunal as required under Section 196 of the Customs Act, 1969. 4”, the bench said in its order.
Accordingly, all these Reference Applications are dismissed. Let copy of this order be sent to the Customs Appellate Tribunal in terms of Section 196 (5) of the Customs Act, 1969, the judgment said.