(1) WE have heard Sri Soli J. Sorabjee, for the petitioners and Sri Ganguly for the Revenue. Petitioners having asked for copies of all the documents on which the Collector of central Excise proposed to rely, the latter having regard to voluminous and spread out nature of the documents, consisting of number of registers, files and other records, suggested that petitioners may inspect the documents and make copies - photostat or otherwise - of whatever documents they wish to have. This, in our opinion, is a reasonable suggestion, as otherwise it would, perhaps, be a struggle with infinity for the department to furnish copies of each and every document. The question is who is to bear the expenses involved in taking out photostats. Petitioners rely in this behalf on certain departmental instructions to say that the department has to pay.

(2) THE reasonable and pragmatic solution is to require the Collector to have a meeting with petitioners and their learned counsel to find out a practical way of identifying essential documents required to be made copies of. It would also, perhaps, be appropriate for the Collector to sift the seized documents and, as far as practicable at this stage, to identify the documents essentially necessary for the department so that the non-essential surplusage could be weeded out to the extent possible to reduce the number of documents which the petitioner may make copies of.

(3) REASONABLE expenditure for copying whatever document the petitioner would ultimately find it reasonably necessary to take copies of, shall be reimbursed by the department to the petitioners. Para 9(a) of the Departmental Instructions, enjoins on it to furnish copies at its own cost.

(4) THE documents on which the department does not seek to rely shall be returned to the petitioners, if not already done, within four weeks from today.

(5) WITH these observations and directions, the Special Leave Petition is disposed of.