The Bombay high court on Monday expressed "prime facie" dissatisfaction with Skoda Auto Volkswagen India's arguments against a USD 1.4 billion notice from the Customs department.

The HC also commended a department officer for his dedicated efforts and thorough research prior to issuing the notice.

"Prima facie, we are not satisfied with your (Skoda Auto Volkswagen India) argument. This is only prima facie," a division bench of Justices B P Colabawalla and Firdosh Pooniwalla said.

"To entertain such a plea at the stage of show cause notice is something you have to convince us. This is troubling us whether we should entertain the plea at the stage of show cause notice," it added.

The notice claimed the German group, led in the country by Skoda Auto Volkswagen India, allegedly provided misleading information to the department by misclassifying its imports of Audi, Skoda and Volkswagen cars as "individual parts" instead of "Completely Knocked Down" (CKD) units, thereby paying significantly lower Customs duties.

The CKD units attract a 30-35% duty, but Volkswagen declared its imports as separate components in different shipments and paid only 5-15% in duties, as per the Customs. The department said import of various unassembled parts of cars should have been declared as CKD units.

"One thing though, we must commend the Customs officer because he has painstakingly gone through each number of the part. Because every part has a specific number. Each part has a KEN number," Justice Colabawalla said.

KEN number refers to a unique identification number used primarily for automotive parts, allowing Customs officials to track which specific car model the parts belong to when importing large quantities of individual components.