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1. The appellants are aggrieved with the Order-in-Appeal passed by Collector (Appeals), Bangalore upholding their claim for classification of the product Try Snack Foods called Fryums' under Chapter Heading 21 of Central Excise Tariff Act, 1985 but has denied the benefit of the Notification No. 12/90-C.E., dated 20-3-1990. The learned Collector (Appeals) has negatived the contention of the appellants that the product in question is 'Namkeens'. He has held that "the term Namkeen as used in the notification would denote only such of these items which are ready to eat. The examples cited, that is, Bhujiya and Chabena only clarify the situation that both these products are in a ready to eat condition and do not require any further processing except opening and eating. Fryums or narnkeens, manufactured by the appellants would not be covered by the notification. The appellants' product requires to be fried before it can be eaten. They are, therefore, not eligible for the benefit of Notification No. 12/90. The appeal is accordingly disposed of."

2. The appellant has given the various steps in the process of manufacture of the Fryums as follows :-

"Step 1 : Raw materials such as rice flour, wheat flour, edible tapioca starch, salt and spices are blended in mixture.
Step 2 : Water is added to the blended material to bring up the moisture content to form a dough.
Step 3 : This dough is thermally conditioned and then pressed through a die where the rotating knife cuts the product into uniform pieces.
Step 4 : The pieces are skin-dried so that they do not stick to each other and then further dried to remove residual moisture. This results in a hard dry product.
Step 5 : The dried product is packed in unit packs using printed wrapping material.
Step 6 : The unit packs are then repacked in a master carton.
It is contended by them that they had claimed classification under Heading 2107 of Central Excise Tariff and claiming benefit of Notification No. 19/89-C.E., dt. 1-3-1989 read with Notification No. 12/90-C.E., dt. 20-3-1990. It is contended by the appellant that the product is similar in all respects to papads, idli-mix, vada-mix, dosa-mix, jalebi-mix, Gulab Jamun-mix specified in the Notification No. 19/89-C.E., dt. 1-3-1989 were not ready to eat snacks and required frying before eating similar to Fryums. It is stated that Sl. No. 5 of the notification in question was merely illustrative and not exhaustive, and that fryums manufactured by them was "Namkeen" and fell within the exempted category specified in Notification No. 19/89-C.E., dated 1-3-1989. Alternatively, it is contended that Fryums would fall under Heading 2107.99 under the category "other" since they were not in "Unit containers" but were packed in flexible polyethylene covers. They have further contended that the assessments were made provisional and backed by a Bond and that there was no case for imposing penalty of Rs. 500/- and that the learned Collector should have instead approved their classification list filed by them by granting the benefit of Notification No. 19/89-C.E., dated 1-3-1989.

5. We have carefully considered the submissions made by both the sides and have perused the records. The learned Collector in his order has upheld the appellants' contention for classification of the product under Heading 2107 but, however, he has not decided the sub-heading in this Heading 2107 and he has denied the benefit of Notification No. 12/90. The learned Collector is of the view that the notification exempts namkeens like Bhujiya and Chabena and he has rejected the contention of the appellants that their product Fryums is nothing but namkeen. The learned Collector has held that the term Namkeen as used in the notification would denote such of those items which are ready to be eaten. In other words, these are fully prepared food stuff which do not require any further processing. The examples cited, that is Bhujiya and Chabena only clarify the situation that both these products are in a ready to eat condition and do not require any further processing except opening and eating. The learned Collector has contended that Fryums or Namkeens manufactured by the appellants could not be covered by this notification as the product required to be fried before it can be eaten. Therefore, on this ground, he has rejected the benefit of Notification No. 12/90 dated 20-3-1990 Before we could advert to examine the grant of benefit of the notification in question, we are required to fix the classification of this product. There is no doubt that this product falls under Heading 2107 which describes "Edible preparations not elsewhere specified or included". The sub-headings are noted below :-