ELFA Diagnostic Kits Eligible For Customs Exemption Available To ELISA Kits

The Chennai Bench of CESTAT has held that diagnostic kits based on Enzyme-Linked Fluorescent Assay (‘ELFA’) technology are eligible for the customs duty and IGST concessions available to Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (‘ELISA’) kits under Notification No. 50/2017-Cus. and related IGST notifications.

The Department had alleged that the importer wrongly declared its VIDAS diagnostic kits as ELISA kits while they were actually ELFA-based products and therefore not entitled to the exemption. Rejecting this view, the Tribunal observed that ELFA is not a distinct diagnostic methodology but an advanced technological variant of ELISA, with the difference lying only in the mode of signal detection, namely fluorescence instead of colourimetric detection.