Mr. Sujay Kantawala speaking at the
Knowledge Session held during 4th EC Meeting
The 4th Executive
Committee (EC) Meeting of the Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Associations in
India (FFFAI), which was held at NESCO, Mumbai on 28th and 29th Feb, had a very
special Knowledge Session captioned "Who will police the police". This
highly interesting Session was conducted by Dr. Sujay Kantawala, who is an
eminent lawyer and specializes in Constitutional and Administrative Law
litigation pertaining to Indirect Taxation, Customs, Excise, Service Tax and
Anti-Dumping Duty. The objective of organizing this session was to sensitize
the FFFAI members regarding undue practices of authorities concerned as regards
to Customs Brokers’ plights of being penalized for a matter without any
involvement and responsibilities for the same.
Welcoming the Special Guest Speaker Dr. Sujay Kantawala, Mr
Dushyant Mulani, Chairman, FFFAI pondered on the importance of the subject of
this session. He pointed out that the CB community often faces undue penalties
imposed on them, Show Cause Notices are being issued, harassment and treated on
par with exporters or importers for any mistakes done by their customers
(importers or exporters).
Taking cue from the FFFAI Chairman, Hon. Secretary Mr. Sudip Dey
highlighted Dr. Kantawala’s professional profile as an acclaimed advocate and
his support to the industry. He frequently appeared in the Supreme Court of
India and many High Courts across the States to safeguard the interest of
victims pertaining to issues on indirect taxes, customs, excise, service tax
matter, anti-dumping duty, etc.
In his presentation Dr. Kantawala, focused on Customs related
issues and especially on misinterpretations of the CBLR/Customs Act by many
Customs Officers. He raised the serious concern of accountability of Customs
Officers. Quoting renowned Justice Krishna Iyer’s statement “Who will
police the police?”, he raised the pertinent question “Who will police the
Customs Officers?” According to him, Citizen Charters displayed in Customs
Offices do not make any sense in view of the ground reality. For example after
five years a CB is not required to maintain any records. However, he still
receives Show Cause Notices (SCN) for the same. He also underscored many
instances of serving SCNs to CBs for which he was not even remotely involved.
He also stated that responsibilities on issues/disputes arising out of
self-assessment are equal concerning involvement of a shipper and proper
officer who is the final verifying authority on this matter. In his opinion,
many times Customs Officers fail to adhere to the Guidelines issued by the
CBIC. CBs should not be penalized for any error in this regard. Similarly,
concerned Officers should be punished for any incorrect SCN, penalty or
revocation of CB license.
Concluding the Knowledge Session, Mr. Dushyant Mulani informed that
with inputs and guidance of Dr. Kantawala, FFFAI would make a representation to
CBIC to do away with any injustice to the CB community. He appreciated
Dr. Kantawala’s statement that unequal cannot be considered as equal defending
the Article 14 of the constitution of India. He pointed out that 70 percent of
FFFAI members are from the MSME Sector and this sector is the backbone of the
progress of the country. FFFAI is committed to protect the interest of this
sector for the greater interest of the country’s economy.
Attended by more than 100 EC Members across 31 locations in the
country, the EC meeting was also addressed by Mr. Sagar Kadu, Director
Logistics, DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. He
graced the occasion to share insights on the government’s initiatives in the
Logistics sector for meeting the ambitious target of becoming the third-largest
economy in the world, with a target of a $5 trillion economy by 2025 and a
'developed country' by 2047.
The 4th EC meeting also discussed several issues
and recommendations regarding Customs, Sea Port, Airport, ICDs etc .
At this meeting FFFAI released a LIVE shipment through FIATA e-BL.
This marks a significant step in the history of FFFAI in supporting the
Government initiatives of Digitization. The FIATA paperless Bill of Lading
allows freight forwarders to easily issue a secured e-FBL through a seamless
one-click process, thereby removing double data entry. Members of FFFAI can
generate the bill in three distinct ways; API integration with internal systems
to fetch the data into the platform, excel uploads or using an innovative
machine learning interface to pull data from legacy PDF or scanned documents
into the FIATA format with more than 95% accuracy. FFFAI is the only authorized
representative of FIATA in India to offer FIATA e-BL services through its
Member SSO login, in a highly secured digital environment.