Per Shri T.P. Nambiar :

This is an appeal filed by the appellants against the orders passed by the Collector of Customs. In terms of that order he dropped the proceedings so far as the ITC aspect is concerned in respect of 256 x 9 KD DRAM Modules. As far as the assessment of the goods is concerned, he held that they are not assessable under Heading 8542 read with Customs Notification 188/87. He held that they are leviable to duty under Heading 8473.30.

2. In this case the appellants filed Bill of Entry for clearance of the goods declared as ICS parts No. MB 5227 - 12 PC. They sought clearance of the goods under OGL Sl.No.1 as Appx.6. On examination of the goods and documents, the department was of the opinion that the goods imported were not discreet devices and they comprised of 9 Nos. of integrated circuits/micro circuits mounted on a carrier viz., printed circuit and connected/inter-connected to form a single assembly and they also found that the goods imported did not appear to be integrated circuits classifiable under Heading 8542 of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975. Show cause notice was issued to the appellants and the appellants replied the same.

3. In this case, the department themselves obtained the opinion of Prof. Sonde of the Indian Institute of Science. He has given an opinion in this case to the effect that the items can be considered as an electronic micro assembly referred to at page 1401 of HSN Notes. The learned adjudicating authority after referring to the HSN Notes came to the conclusion that this opinion of Prof. Sonde is not in terms of HSN Explanatory Notes for the reason that desoldering of the various elements could be done in this case.

4. The learned Advocate for the appellants Shri Sridhar contended before us that when the opinion of Prof. Sonde was sought, the department had addressed a letter and they had also sent the copy of the HSN Notes to Prof. Sonde. He pointed out that Prof. Sonde is a technical expert in this field. When he has considered the HSN Notes as could be seen from his letter dated 1.7.88, the adjudicating authority could not have decided the same by relying on the HSN Notes without further getting a clarification of the expert who was of the choice of the department itself. He also pointed out that the appellant themselves have furnished the opinion of experts in this regard. The learned Advocate pointed out that opinion of two other experts were available to the Collector. He pointed out that the first opinion is the opinion of Shri A.T. Poovanna, Deputy Manager of Bharat Electronics Ltd., which was also before the adjudicating authority and no reasons are furnished as to why this opinion cannot be accepted. He also pointed that this opinion was not taken note of by the learned adjudicating authority while deciding the point in issue. It was further pointed out that there was another opinion of Dr. A.P. Shivaprasad, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science vide his letter dated 4.7.88 and the adjudicating authority has not considered this opinion also.

5. The learned JDR for the department Shri Arulswamy on the other hand drew our attention to para 16 of the impugned order, wherein the learned adjudicating authority held as follows:

"16. In his opinion tendered through his letter No. EL:BSS:349 dated 1.7.1988, Prof. B.S. Sonde, Divisional Chairman, Electrical Sciences Division Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, has opined that the item imported is essentially a small printed circuit board (multilayer type) consisting of 9 monolithic ICs and that the PCB provides interconnections to the 9 ICs. He has further opined that the item imported is in no way different from the user obtaining MB 81256-12 ICs and assembling them himself on printed circuit board in house so as to obtain the required capacity. He has gone further to opine that the item imported is a sub-assembly of ICs and on account of its overall size, it can fa