Per Jyoti Balasundaram : The appellants herein are engaged in the manufacture of Chassis of Motor Vehicles in their factory at Jamshedpur since 1954. With the levy of Central Excise duty on Motor Vehicles under Tariff Item 34 of the erstwhile Central Excise Tariff Schedule in 1956, the appellants were paying excise duty on all their clearances of Motor Vehicle Chassis (hereinafter referred to as MVCs) irrespective of the category of the customer/location, based on its Net Dealer Price (hereinafter referred to as NDP) charged for sales made at its factory gate, even in respect of vehicles stock transferred from the factory to various Regional Sales Offices (herein after referred to as RSOs) from where sales were made eventually to the dealers/buyers. In the middle of September, 1975, the appellants filed price lists in terms of the proposed new Section 4 of the Central Excise Act introduced in October, 1975, indicating that the sales are being made at the factory gate to dealers and also that the vehicles are transferred from the factory to RSOs for sales therefrom, and requested the Asstt. Commissioner to approve payment of duty based on NDP as is applicable to concerned RSO after deducting the cost of transportation. Vide letter dated 30.9.1975, the appellants claimed that duty on clearances to RSOs should also be levied at the prices applicable on wholesale rate, since sales were effected in the course of wholesale trade to dealers at the factory namely, dealers in the State of Bihar. The price lists for clearances to dealers in Bihar were approved by the Asstt. Commissioner's letter dated 1.10.1975. The Asstt. Commissioner also approved separate set of price list filed for clearances to RSOs directing payment of excise duty on NDP charged by RSOs for sales made from RSOs. Thus the price for dealers in Bihar was not made applicable for removals to RSOs for eventual sale therefrom. The appellants agitated the issue of assessment of RSOs clearances at the normal price as is applicable for dealers in the State of Bihar for whom clearances are directly made from the factory, but without any success, before the Central Excise Authority and therefore, they filed Writ Petition No. 704 of 1976 before the Hon'ble Patna High Court seeking issue of direction to the Excise Authorities to take the wholesale cash price ex-works as the value for levying excise duty for MVCs sold to RSOs. On 5.1.77, the petition was allowed, the Revenue filed an application for certificate for leave to appeal under Article 133 (1) of the Constitution; the same was rejected by the Patna High Court by its order dated 28.2.78; the Revenue filed SLP No. 3989 of 1978 on 24.4.78 before the Hon'ble Supreme Court which by its order dated 23.4.79, dismissed the SLP. The price lists filed from 1975 to Feb. 1983 declaring NDP charged from the dealers at the factory were approved by the department and duty was paid based on this value even for transfers to RSOs. However, from March, 1983, onwards price lists filed by the appellants were not approved as above and the price lists were directed to be approved provisionally from 3.3.83. The appellants were directed to file separate price lists in respect of sales through RSO. The appellants then filed a Writ Petition No. 802/88 before the Patna High Court praying for issue of writ of prohibition, prohibiting the department from in any manner provisionally assessing the price lists on the ground of any enquiry in the prices of MVCs sold by them from RSO and praying for approval of price lists without considering the sale price from RSOs. The petition was allowed on 27.9.88 and the High Court directed the department to approve the price lists without any delay and held that the normal price charged on the dealers from the factory gate would be the assessable value of the MVCs. This order was set aside by the Hon'ble Supreme Court by its order dated 10.11.1997 [reported in 1997 (23) RLT 341 (SC)], wherein the Court direc