HC orders DGFT to consider cotton ginners plea

The Bombay High Court has asked the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to consider the applications of cotton ginners from Maharashtra. The court order comes a major relief to ginners who were not allowed to export cotton from the additional allocation quota of one million bales (1 bale = 170 kgs).

While hearing the writ petitions and civil applications of Anil Ginning and Pressing Factory, Lesha Impex Pvt Ltd, ORS Trading Company, A K Corporation and Shree Shiv Trading Company, the court asked the DGFT to give them a floor limit of 100 tonnes per import export code (IEC).

Exporters who applied between June 25 and July 6 will be eligible for the quota. DGFT was ordered to allocate the quantity before July 27.

The bench of Chief Justice Mohit S Shah and Justice Girish S Godbole passed the order.

Ginners who applied before 25 June, will be allocated at least 100 tonnes and the remaining quantity after allocation, will be divided among them on a pro-rata basis with a ceiling of 4,250 tonnes per IEC. Allocations have to be made by July 27. Ginners, who had applied earlier for export quantity of less than 100 metric tonnes, will be considered for 100 metric tonnes.

After the pro-rata allocation it will be open to the respondents to round-off the quantities of cotton bales to 25 metric tonnes (150 cotton bales or one container load). In other words, allocation to parties who had applied on or before June 25, will be in multiplies of 25 tonnes. In case the allocation on pro-rata basis comes to a fraction of one container load, it will be rounded off to the nearest integer.

The high court further clarified that the directions apply to all parties who applied on or before June 25, irrespective of the fact whether they have approached a court or not.