Section 6 — Protective duties on Tariff Commission recommendation

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Former Section 6 allowed protective duties on Tariff Commission recommendation. Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 omitted the section because the Tariff Commission had been wound up. It cannot be used as authority for a new protective duty after the omission.

Statutory position and legal effect

For Section 6, the legal answer should be built in layers. First identify what the section itself does; second identify the Schedule, notification, rule or investigation record that activates it for the goods and date; third reconcile that result with the Customs Act assessment machinery. This avoids a frequent customs error: treating a statutory power, a tariff rate and an effective rate as if they were the same thing.

The material date matters because tariff lines, exemptions, origin rules and trade-remedy measures change independently. A defensible file should therefore retain the exact tariff extract and notification version used in the assessment. Where this page is marked historical or transitional, the section should be cited only for a period when it legally operated or for explaining the transition to the current framework.

From an evidence perspective, the strongest working paper is not a screenshot of a duty calculator. It is a reconciliation showing the declared tariff item, legal notes considered, statutory rate, effective notification serial, preference/origin basis, additional levies, trade-remedy measure if any, and the arithmetic from customs value to final duty. Section 6 should occupy its correct place in that chain.

Official text control: use the India Code/Gazette version of Section 6 and the Schedule or delegated instrument applicable on the transaction date. This page intentionally explains the law rather than reproducing a long unofficial bare-act extract.

Applicability, rights, obligations and decision workflow

1. Step 1. Determine whether the matter concerns a historical protective duty actually imposed before omission.
2. Step 2. For current relief, identify whether the complaint is safeguard, subsidisation or dumping.
3. Step 3. Use DGTR’s present filing/investigation framework where the remedy is a trade remedy.
4. Step 4. Keep any historical Section 6 notification in the material-date file only.
5. Step 5. Do not describe Section 7 as a source of a new Section 6 protective duty.

Older cases and manuals may still reproduce the section. Current industry-protection measures should be analysed under the live safeguard/trade-remedy provisions such as Section 8B, Section 9 and Section 9A, not resurrected Section 6.

Thresholds, provisos, timelines and interaction with other law

The section must be read with the Customs Act, the tariff Schedules and any subordinate instrument that gives it transaction-level effect. Where the provision contains a power rather than a self-executing charge, no duty or obligation should be assumed without locating the notification, rule, agreement or investigation determination that activates the power. Historical provisions require the same material-date discipline.

Rate changes, classification changes and trade-remedy measures are different legal events. The file should say exactly which one occurred and should not infer the enabling provision merely from the fact that the landed duty increased or decreased.

Rules, notifications, Finance Acts and operational instruments

Case law — provision-specific research matrix

Worked example

A domestic producer in 2026 seeks protection from an import surge. The legal route is not a fresh request under omitted Section 6; the facts should be tested against the current safeguard framework in Section 8B and the Safeguard Measures Rules.

Professional result: document the legal route before doing the arithmetic. A short computation that identifies the correct provision and current notification is stronger than a long calculation based on an obsolete tariff or historical measure.

Evidence and compliance checklist

• Material date and customs event.
• Exact 8-digit tariff item and candidate headings considered.
• Relevant Section/Chapter/Subheading Notes and GRI reasoning.
• Statutory Schedule rate and effective exemption/preference rate.
• Current notification/rule/Finance Act extract with effective date.
• Section 3 additional levies and separate trade-remedy duty, if any.
• Origin/FTA support where a preferential rate is claimed.
• Assessment/order and calculation reconciliation retained with source links.

Common mistakes and professional traps

• Citing a pre-2024 bare act as current
• Treating Section 6 and Section 8B as interchangeable
• Assuming Section 7 independently creates a power to impose a new protective duty
• Using an old manual or judgment for a current tariff rate without checking later amendments.
• Quoting a four-digit HSN heading when the legal outcome turns on an eight-digit tariff item or a national note.

Related provisions and research routes

• Customs Act section 12 — charging provision
• Customs Act section 14 — valuation
• First Schedule / General Rules for Interpretation
• CBIC effective-rate and exemption notifications

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