This course covers Section 28 of the Customs Act 1962 — the provision empowering the proper officer to demand duty that has been short-levied, not levied, erroneously refunded, or short-paid — read alongside Chapter 14 of the Indian Customs Manual 2025. Section 28 is one of the most examination-intensive provisions in the CBLE syllabus, generating questions across multiple dimensions — the time limits for issuing a notice, the distinction between ordinary cases and fraud/collusion/wilful misstatement cases, the Show Cause Notice procedure, the self-correction window, and the consequences of non-payment — and this course treats each dimension with precision.

The course opens with the legal trigger for Section 28 — the situations in which a demand arises: duty not levied, duty short-levied, duty erroneously refunded, and interest not charged or short-charged — and explains how each situation arises in practice, including errors in self-assessment, incorrect classification or valuation, and wrongful exemption claims. The two-tier time limit framework is then covered in full — the standard one-year period for ordinary cases and the extended five-year period for cases involving fraud, collusion, wilful misstatement, or suppression of facts — since the time limit applicable to a given scenario is one of the most consistently tested aspects of Section 28 in the CBLE. The course explains precisely what constitutes fraud, collusion, wilful misstatement, and suppression of facts in the context of Section 28, since establishing the extended period requires the proper officer to allege and substantiate one of these grounds.

The Show Cause Notice procedure under Section 28 is covered step by step — the mandatory content of the notice, the opportunity to be heard, the personal hearing requirement, the adjudication order, and the time limit within which the adjudicating authority must pass an order after issue of the SCN. The self-correction mechanism under Section 28(1) proviso — where an importer who discovers a short-payment may pay the differential duty with interest before a notice is issued and thereby avoid the SCN process — is addressed as both a compliance tool and a CBLE-tested procedural option. Chapter 14 of the Indian Customs Manual 2025 is mapped throughout for the operational procedure governing less-charge demands, the role of the audit function in identifying demand cases, and the internal approval process for issuing Section 28 notices.