Hon'ble Judges/Coram:
A.K. Sikri and Rohinton Fali Nariman

JUDGMENT

Rohinton Fali Nariman, J.

1. Leave granted in S.L.P. (Civil) No. 13028 of 2012 and S.L.P. (Civil) No. 27811 of 2012.

2. Seven appeals are before us; some of them are from the Bombay High Court judgment dated 15.12.2011 and the Kerala High Court judgment dated 15.07.2009. Others are appeals against a Karnataka Tribunal (Bangalore) judgment and a Bombay Tribunal judgment, which follows the Bombay High Court judgment referred to above. Since all these appeals raise a common question of law of some complexity relating to anti-dumping duty, the said appeals have been bunched together and are being disposed of together. It may also be stated that the preponderant view, that is the view of both the Bombay and Kerala High Courts and the Bombay Tribunal, is in favour of the construction suggested by revenue. Only the Karnataka Tribunal (Bangalore) has decided in favour of the Assessee.

3. The question of law which arises in the instant appeals is whether anti-dumping duty imposed with respect to imports made during the period between the expiry of the provisional anti-dumping duty and the imposition of the final anti-dumping duty is legal and valid.

4. It is necessary in this case to begin at the very beginning. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Article VI first laid down how, conceptually, anti-dumping duties were to be imposed. The relevant part of Article VI reads as under:

Article VI

Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties

1. The contracting parties recognize that dumping, by which products of one country are introduced into the commerce of another country at less than the normal value of the products, is to be condemned if it causes or threatens material injury to an established industry in the territory of a contracting party or materially retards the establishment of a domestic industry. For the purposes of this Article, a product is to be considered as being introduced into the commerce of an importing country at less than its normal value, if the price of the product exported from one country to another

(a) is less than the comparable price, in the ordinary course of trade, for the like product when destined for consumption in the exporting country, or,

(b) in the absence of such domestic price, is less than either

(i) the highest comparable price for the like product for export to any third country in the ordinary course of trade, or

(ii) the cost of