1. Short title and commencement. (1) This Act may be called the Customs and Central Excises Laws (Amendment) Act, 1988.

(2) It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint:

Provided that different dates may be appointed for different provisions of this Act and any reference in any such provision to the commencement of this Act shall be construed as a reference to the coming into force of that provision.

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2. Amendment of Section 3. In Section 3 of the Customs Act, 1962 (52 of 1962), (hereafter in this Chapter referred to as the Customs Act clause (a) shall be re-lettered as clause (aa), and before clause (ad) as so re-lettered, the following clause shall be inserted, namely :

(a) Principal Collectors of Customs; .

3. Amendment of Section 28-A. Section 28-A of the Customs Act shall be renumbered as sub-section (1) thereof, and after sub-section (1) as so renumbered, the following sub-section shall be inserted, namely :

(2) Where any notification under sub-section (1) in respect of any goods has been issued, the whole of the duty paid on such goods, or, as the case may be, the duty paid in excess of that payable on such goods, which would not have been paid if the said notification had been in force, shall be refunded in accordance with the said notification:

Provided that the person claiming the refund of such duty or, as the case may be, excess duty, makes an application in this behalf to the Assistant Collector of Customs before the expiry of six months from the date of issue of the said notification and proves to the satisfaction of the Assistant Collector of Customs that the incidence of such duty had not been passed on to any other person. .

4. Amendment of Section 129-D. In Section 129-D of the Customs Act, after sub-section (4), the following sub-section shall be inserted, namely :

(5) The provisions of this section shall not apply to any decision or order in which the determination of any question having a relation to the rate of duty or to the value of goods for the purposes of assessment of any duty is in issue or is one of the points in issue.

Explanation. For the purposes of this sub-section, the determination of a rate of duty in relation to any goods or valuation of any goods for the purposes of assessment of duty includes the determination of a question

(a) relating to the rate of duly for the time being in force, whether under the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 (51 of 1975), or under any other Central Act providing for the levy and collection of any duty of customs, in relation to any goods on or after the 28th day of February, 1986; or

(b) relating to the value of goods for the purposes of assessment of any duty in cases where the assessment is made on or after the 28th clay of February, 1986; or

(c) whether any goods fall under a particular heading or sub-heading of the First Schedule or the Second Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 (51 of 1975), or that any goods are or not covered by a particular notification or order issued by the Central Government granting total or partial exemption from duty; or

(d) whether the value of any goods for the purposes of assessment of duty shall be enhanced or reduced by the addition or reduction of the amounts in respect of such matters as are specifically provided in this Act. .

5. Insertion of new Section 129-DA. After Section 129-D of the Customs Act, the following section shall be inserted, namely:

129-DA. Powers of revision of Board or Collector of Customs in certain cases. (1) The Board may, of its own motion or on the application of any aggrieved person or otherwise, call for and examine the record of any proceeding in which a Collector of Customs has passed any decision or order [not being a decision or order passed under sub-section (2) of this section] of the nature referred to in sub-section (5) of Section 129-D for the purpose of satisfying itself as to the correctness, legality or propriety or such decision or order and may pass such order thereon as it thinks fit.

The Collector of Custom may, of his own motion or on the application of any aggrieved person or otherwise, call for and examine the record of any proceeding in which an adjudicating authority subordinate to him has passed any decision or order of the nature referred to in sub-section (5) of Section 129-D for the purpose of satisfying himself as to the correctness, legality or propriety of such decision or order and may pass such order thereon as he thinks fit.

(a) No decision or order under this section shall be made so as to prejudicially affect any person unless such person is given a reasonable opportunity of making representation and if, he so desires, of being heard in his defence.

(b) Where the Board or, as the case may be, the Collector of Customs is of the opinion that any duty has not been levied or has been short-levied or short-paid or erroneously refunded, no order requiring the affected person to pay any duty not levied or paid, short-levied or short-paid or erroneously refunded shall be passed under (his section unless such person is given notice within the time limit specified in Section 23 to show cause against the proposed order.

(4) No proceedings shall be initiated under sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) in respect of any decision or order after the expiry of a period of six months from the date of communication of such decision or order:

Provided that in respect of any decision or order passed before the commencement of the Customs and Central Excises Laws (Amendment) Act, 1987, the provisions of this sub-section shall have effect as if for the words six months , the words one year were substituted.

(5) Any person aggrieved by any decision or order passed under sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) may appeal to the Customs and Excise Revenues Appellate Tribunal established under Section 3 of the Customs and Excise Revenues Appellate Tribunal Act, 1986 (62 of 1986), against such decision or order. .

6. Insertion of new Section 138-C. After Section 138-B of the Customs Act, the following section shall be inserted, namely :

138-C. Admissibility of micro films, facsimile copies of documents and computer print outs as documents and as evidence. (1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force,

(a) a micro film of a document or the reproduction of the image or images embodied in such micro film (whether enlarged or not); or

(b) a facsimile copy of a document; or

(c) a statement contained in a document and included in a printed material produced by a computer (hereinafter referred to as a computer print out ), if the conditions mentioned in sub-section (2) and the other provisions contained in this section are satisfied in relation to the statement and the computer in question,

shall be deemed to be also a document for the purposes of this Act and the rules made thereunder and shall be admissible in any proceedings thereunder, without further proof or production of the original, as evidence of any contents of the original or of any fact stated therein of which direct evidence would be admissible.

(2) The conditions referred to in sub-section (1) in respect of a computer print out shall be the following, namely :

(a)the computer print out containing the statement was produced by the computer during the period over which the computer was used regularly to store or process information for the purposes of any activities regularly carried on over that period by the person having lawful control over the use of the computer;

(b) during the said period, there was regularly supplied to the computer in the ordinary course of the said activities, information of the kind contained in the statement or of the kind from which the information so contained is derived;

(c) throughout the material part of the said period, the computer was operating properly or, if not, then any respect in which it was not operating properly or was out of operation during that part of that period was not such as to affect the production of the document or the accuracy of the contents; and

(d) the information contained in the statement reproduces or is derived from information supplied to the computer in the ordinary course of the said activities.

(3) Where over any period, the function of storing or processing information for the purposes of any activities regularly carried on over that period as mentioned in clause (a) of sub-section (2) was regularly performed by computers, whether

(a) by a combination of computers operating over that period; or (b) by different computers operating in succession over that period; or

(b) by different combinations of computers operating in succession over that period; or

(c) in any other manner involving the successive operation over that period, in whatever order, of one or more computers and one or more combinations of computers,

all the computers used for that purpose during that period shall be treated for the purposes of this section as constituting a single computer; and references in this section to a computer shall be construed accordingly.

(4) In any proceedings under this Act and the rules made there under where it is desired to give a statement in evidence by virtue of this section, a certificate doing any of the following things, that is to say,

(a) identifying the document containing the statement and describing the manner in which it was produced;

(b) giving such particulars of any device involved in the production of that document as may be appropriate for the purpose of showing that the document was produced by a computer;

(c) dealing with any of the matters to which the conditions mentioned in sub-section (2) relate,

and purporting to be signed by a person occupying a responsible official position in relation to the operation of the relevant device or the management of the relevant activities (whichever is appropriate) shall be evidence of any matter stated in the certificate; and for the purposes of this sub-section it shall be sufficient for a matter to be stated to the best of the knowledge and belief of the person stating it.

(5) For the purposes of this section,

(a) information shall be taken to be supplied to a computer if it is supplied thereto in any appropriate form and whether it is so supplied directly or (with or without human intervention) by means of any appropriate equipment;

(b) whether in the course of activities carried on by any official, information is supplied with a view to its being stored or processed for the purposes of those activities by a computer operated otherwise than in the course of those activities, that information, if duly supplied to that computer, shall be taken to be supplied to it in the course of those activities;

(c) a document shall be taken to have been produced by a computer whether it was produced by it directly or (with or without human intervention) by means of any appropriate equipment.

Explanation. For the purposes of this section,

(a) computer means any device that receives, stores and processes data, applying stipulated processes to the information and supplying results of these processes: and

(b) any reference to information being derived from other information shall be a reference to its being derived therefrom by calculation, comparison or any other process. .

7. Amendment of Section 152. In Section 152 of the Customs Act, in clause (a), for the words a Collector of Customs' , the words a Principal Collector of Customs or a Collector of Customs shall be substituted.

8. Amendment of Section 159. In Section 159 of the Customs Act, after the figures 25, , the figures and letter 28-A, shall be inserted.

9 15.[Amendments made by, inserted in the main Act].

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1. Received the assent of the President on May 18, 1988 and published in the Gaz. of India, Extra., Pt. II, S. 1, dt. 19th May, 1988, pp. 1-12.