Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax officers have an exceptionally important role in the economic development of our country as the customs duties and central excise duties have been a significant source of revenue for the country's development. Now service tax collections are also on the rise. In addition to regulating cross border trade and collecting taxes, Customs and Central Excise officers need to address the country's security concerns by curbing money laundering, Intellectual Property Rights infringement and smuggling of firearms, narcotic drugs, fake currency, etc. The intricacy of the assignment of a Customs or Central Excise officer lies in the realization of revenue and prevention of smuggling without disturbing the national and international trade. Due to the changes caused by technological advancement, liberalization and globalization, it is a challenging task to strike the right balance between trade facilitation and enforcement of Law.

Over the years, the responsibilities of the Customs and also of the Central Excise officers have become remarkably more complex and challenging. The initiatives of the Government and the Department for computerization of the import and export cargo clearances such as Indian Customs EDI System (ICES), Risk Management System (RMS), National Import Database (NIDB), Export Commodity Database (ECDB), Indian Customs and Excise Gateway (ICEGATE), etc., on the customs side and the Automation of Central Excise and Service tax (ACES), Computer Assisted Audit Programme (CAAP), etc. in the central excise, have made the task much easier. Still, to achieve the twin objectives of trade facilitation and law enforcement, there is a crying need to raise the level of competence of the officers through training and exposure to the Act, rules and regulations which they enforce. Indian Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax Laws Referencer (www.Referencer.in) is an effort in this direction. Indian Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax Laws Referencer (www.Referencer.in) makes available up-to-date copies of the Customs Act, Central Excise Act and Allied Acts, Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax Rules and Regulations, Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax Circulars, Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax Notifications, Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax Manuals, Union Budgets, Finance Acts, etc. for easy access, reference and use. www.referencer.in also aims at encouraging exchange of views, ideas and information amongst its members with negligible expenditure.

I am grateful to S/Shri Yeshodhan G.Parande, Member, Authority for Advance Rulings, New Delhi and former Member, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), New Delhi; Banibrata Bhattacharya, Commissioner of Customs, Bangalore; P.Vinaykumar, Former Additional Director, RMD, Mumbai; Basawraj Nalegave, Additional Commissioner of Customs, Mumbai; Balaji Majumdar, Additional Director, DRI Chennai; Anupam Majumdar, Atanu Choudhury and P.K.Gupta, Superintendents of Customs (Preventive), Mumbai; all my Colleagues in the Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax Departments and all the registered members for their encouragement and feedback; Mr. Chethan P.Dev, my son for his assistance in building and testing this website. I also express my gratitude to www.microsoft.com and www.cbec.gov.in for the enormous reference material freely available on them.

My affection towards the computer started in the year 2002 when my son, Chethan P.Dev, took admission in Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Bandra, Mumbai to pursue his studies in B.Tech. (Electronics) and we bought our first desktop computer, a small sexy box alongwith a 14" monitor, from M/s IBM, India. While learning basic skills like Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, etc., I also started collecting 'soft copy' of various Acts, Rules, Regulations, Circulars, Notifications, etc. for my own reference. During this search I realized that though a lot of documents were available on the websites, most of them were not up-to-date. The files thus collected were edited, updated and compiled on a mini-CD, normally used in the video cameras, that fitted in any shirt pocket. When curious colleagues enticed interest in this mini-CD compilation I started duplicating it and sharing with them. This was in the year 2003 and its contents and presentation were upgraded to a newer version in the year 2004, while I learnt basics of coding. Thousands of copies of these mini-CDs, each containing data of about 250MB (12,000 to 15,000 printed pages roughly) went into circulation among the customs Officers with the help of the All India Federation of the Superintendents of Customs. It was in the year 2005 that the increase in size of this collection beyond the capacity of the mini-CD coupled with the abrupt stoppage of production of these mini-CDs by their manufacturers put an end to this mini-CD compilation. A compilation on the normal CD was not thought apt as it couldnot be carried to office and home daily with ease. At this juncture, as I was working with the Risk Management Project Team - pioneer of Risk Managemrnt Division, it was a lot more essential to have all these documents handy for my own reference. Though all these documents were available on my home computer, there was no access to these files from my office.

Being an electronic hobbyist, I could learn Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Visual Basic, C#, etc., easily. Day-to-day interactions with the young engineers of M/s BSL, the sofware developers engaged for the RMS, had also given an opportunity to learn and understand more about Servers, Databases, etc. Internet connection was available in the office and at home, designing, coding and commissioning of a website, converting my little computer into a server, hosting the website on it with all the available documents went on smoothly. Finally all these documents became accessible for me from my office also. Gradually, other colleagues in the Risk Management Division also became part of this network and started accessing these documents whenever they required. The next big question before me was why not allow access to other colleagues working elsewhere in the department? It was an easily achievable feat, without much additional labour or expenditure, since the website, for that matter, was already on the internet. Thus on 01.04.2007 this website www.referencer.in was added to the World Wide Web - on an experimental basis, a beta launch in technical parlance - opening its doors to all the officers and staff working in Customs, Central Excise and other allied Departments. Later, the field of coverage was extended to Central Excise and Service Tax also as there was an overwhelming response from the central excise side. Lots of other documents like Service Rules, Leave Rules, LTC Rules, etc. required by Central Governemnt Employees were also added considering their use by the officials working in other Ministries and Departments.

Since this website targets the overall learning process of its members, i.e. officers dealing with the customs, excise and service tax laws, guidance is gladly made available to them in their official duties and functions. This in turn is expected to work wonders while they interact with the general public. Help is also available in other areas including membership registration, password recovery, password change, etc., which is also helpful to them when they start working on the ICES 1.5 version or ACES. A lot of online quizzes are made available for self-test and self-evaluation of one’s knowledge of the law and the results are kept confidential to encourage maximum participation. As a matter of principle, any query from the members, in the normal course, is being replied within twenty-four hours of its receipt. A panel of willing and experienced members have been drafted for the purpose. Many sleepless nights are being spent on the expansion and improvement in content quantity and aesthetic quality of the site. It is also a matter of pride that the site received the consent and approval of the department recently. It is also a great achievement that as on 01.11.2011, going by the Google webmaster tools statistics, 1,272 websites, including Bombay High Court, Supreme Court and Indiatimes websites, are linked to the pages of www.referencer.in, though only a very few pages are available outside the secured area which can be linked. Further, on an average, pages on the site take 2.2 seconds to load (updated on September 26, 2011) which is faster than 64% of sites worldwide. There are a lot of pressure from the professionals like advocates, counsels, CHAs, etc., to extend membership to them also. But, it cannot be dealt at present due to a lot of constraints. I feel flattered and honoured to see the site having more than 4,000 registered members (as on 01.01.2012) - officers across the cadres, Commissionerates and Departments under the CBEC covering all the Districts in India – and serving around 3000 clicks, i.e. visitors daily. This is the lone motivating factor forcing me to devote all my time and energy on its maintenance and modernization.

The last four years of experience in maintaining this site modernised and updated on a day-to-day basis is more than sufficient to learn that upkeep of such a website is indeed a herculean task. One of my seniors once observed that it was like biting more than what one could chew. Many of my friends may also agree that keeping the site mostly up-to-date utilising the very little spare time available to an officer after the normal office or field duties and three to four hours of daily city commuting, is an extraordinary feat. But what is next, no new addition? Yes, www.referencer.in will start its own forums and blogs soon – your own forums and blogs. The “Orkut”, “Facebook”, etc. are testimony to our officers’ reluctance to come out in the open to raise their questions, queries or doubts in public or to discuss their issues openly. At least a few of them create new or anonymous or pseudonymous profiles to air their views. The reasons are obvious. Hope a blog or forum for the members may be a small step forward. Thank you for reading the story.

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