This refers to the Q&A with Nusli Wadia “I missed the bus because I didn’t manipulate the system” (November 5). I second Wadia’s views that a company falls behind, if it chooses to not “manage the system for all licences”.
As collector of customs in the Bombay Custom House (1986-88), I was pressured to prosecute Wadia for a case involving the valuation of his imported plant. It was a routine case of valuation, but it became controversial on the ground that my predecessor had taken a bond and sponsored it for discussion at a collectors’ conference. I was told three times by the revenue secretary directly (not through the usual channel of chairman and member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, or CBEC) to prosecute Wadia, even before the case was adjudicated. I refused and told him that if all those who had given bonds and bank guarantees in disputable cases had to be prosecuted, at least 5,000 cases in the Bombay Custom House would have to be dealt with. A duty was to be paid in this case – that was my finding – but prosecution could not be launched because collectors, in the presence of a CBEC member, had decided that the case was controversial.
That the revenue secretary insisted on Wadia’s prosecution shows that he wanted to single him out, probably because he himself was under pressure to do so by hook or by crook. But he failed because I drew on my statutory power to say no to him. I would like to urge all civil servants to do the same.
Sukumar Mukhopadhyay New Delhi
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