IndiGo Airlines Case: Delhi High Court on Friday sought response from the Customs Department on the petition of ‘InterGlobe Aviation’, which operates IndiGo airline. The petition seeks refund of over Rs 900 crore paid as customs duty on aircraft engines and parts re-imported into India after being repaired abroad.
Issue counter affidavit within two weeks
A bench of Justices V Kameswara Rao and Vinod Kumar issued notice to the Deputy Commissioner (Refunds), Office of the Principal Customs Commissioner, Air Cargo Complex (Import) and asked the officials to file a counter affidavit within two weeks.
The court has fixed the next hearing of this case on April 8, 2026. ‘Interglobe’ has argued in its petition that imposing customs duty on such re-import is unconstitutional and is tantamount to imposing double duty on the same transaction.
The counsel for the Customs Department opposed the petition claiming that it has been filed prematurely and the issue on the basis of which the claim has been filed is pending in the Supreme Court. The lawyer said that the Supreme Court has not passed any stay order and urged the High Court to give some time to file its reply.
Interglobe’s lawyer’s statement
InterGlobe’s counsel argued that at the time of re-import of the aircraft engines and spare parts after repair, it had paid the basic customs duty without any dispute. Apart from this, repairs come under the scope of service, hence Goods and Services Tax (GST) was also paid on it on ‘reverse charge’ basis.
‘Reverse charge’ is a mechanism whereby the recipient (buyer/consumer of service), usually instead of the supplier (seller), is liable to pay GST to the government, whereas in the normal GST system the supplier collects the tax from the customer and deposits it to the government.
However, the lawyer claimed that the customs officials insisted on levying duty again by treating the same transaction as import of goods. The company claimed that the issue had already been resolved by the Customs Tribunal, which had ruled that customs duty could not be levied again on re-import after repair.
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