The payment made by the petitioner-company was a deposit towards duty and not a payment of duty, and therefore, the petitioners were not entitled to a certificate under Rule 57-E of the Rules enabling their customers to avail MODVAT credit.

The Order of the Court is as follows :-

By consent of both parties, the Writ Petitions are taken up for final disposal, at the time of hearing the miscellaneous petitions.

2.The petitioner-company is engaged in the manufacture of aluminium rough castings. They had been availing exemption on these goods under Notification No. 180/88 read with Chapter Heading 7616.90 of the Central Excise Tariff Act. Later the Revenue re-classified the goods as machinery parts falling under Chapter 87 of the Central Excise Tariff, thus denying the benefit of the said notification. The stand of the petitioner-company is that whatever be the classification of the goods, the duty if any, payable by the petitioners, as and when paid becomes a credit of duty for the buyers who use castings in the manufacture of finished goods. Therefore, the contention is that the duty, if paid, becomes a credit for the buyers in terms of Rule 57A of the Central Excise Rules, 1944. The second respondent made two demands for Rs. 78, 78, 292.85 and Rs. 13, 65, 730.15 respectively. Against those demands the petitioner-company has preferred appeals before the Collector of Central Excise (Appeals) and those appeals were dismissed on 7-4-1992. Thereupon the petitioner-company filed further appeals before the third respondent. Those appeals are still pending disposal on the file of the third respondent. Pending disposal of the appeals, the petitioner-company sought for stay of recovery and waiver of pre-deposit of the disputed Excise Duty. Taking up both the cases, the third respondent passed a common order directing the petitioner to deposit an amount of Rs. 10, 00, 000 within 12 weeks from 29-3-1993. With a view to comply with the order of the third respondent, the petitioner-company approached its principal customer who had purchased the goods without duty. The said principal customer by its letter dated 29-4-1993 were willing to reimburse the duty amount provided the petitioner-company furnished T.R. 6 forms certifying the payment of duty by the first respondent. The intention of the said principal customer was that on the basis of the chalan they could take credit under Rule 57-A and utilise the amount as a credit in respect of their finished goods. In respect of one such payment, the petitioner-company approached the first respondent for the issue of a certificate of payment. The first respondent by his letter dated 27-7-1993 refused to issue a certificate on the ground that the payment made in pursuance of the third respondent's order as part of the deposit, cannot be construed as payment of differential duty relating to a particular customer. Therefore, he refused to issue the certificate in order to enable the customer to avail MODVAT credit of the amount so deposited. Thereafter, the petitioner approached the third respondent for extending the time for complying with its order and the third respondent accordingly extended the time up to 15-9-1993. It is under these circumstances that the petitioner-company has filed these two writ petitions in respect of the said two demands for the issue of a writ of mandamus to direct the first and second respondents to give certificate of duty payment in respect of the amounts paid and payable by the petitioners pursuant to the orders of the third respondent made on the said application.

3.There is a certain amount of vagueness in the plea of the petitioners. While they categorically state in the affidavit filed in support of the writ petition that the demand for the certificate under Form T.R. 6 is for the specific purpose of the buyer claiming relief under Rule 57A of the Rules, in another portion of affidavit they express their grievance in the following words :-

"Now in view of the refusal of the 1st and 2nd respondents even to acknowledge the amount paid as duty, the petitioners have no alternative except to approach this Hon'ble High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, on the following amongst ot