Attention is invited to the d.o. letter F.No. D-21019/6- Modvat/ 95/CC- CBEC dated 15th January, 1996, of Shri P.R.V. Ramanan, J.S. (Customs) addressed to all Commissioners of Central Excise. It is observed however, that only a few Commissionerates have issued Trade Notices following the same.

2.    Revised proforma of RG 23 provide that ECC Code No. of the Supplier and Buyer should also be indicated against each entry.

3.    The Board has therefore decided that immediate exercise should be under-taken by the Commissioners to allot the ECC Code number to dealers.

4.    The following guidelines should be observed in regard to allotment of ECC codes to dealers:-

        Every person who issues an invoice or invoices under Rule 57G or, on the case may be, under Rule 57T and is registered under Rule 174 shall be alloted an ECC code as per the following scheme:-

(i)    The Code NO. alloted to each dealer will have 10 (ten) characters,

(ii)    The first two characters from the left stand for Commissionerate Code, next two for Divisional Code and the following two for the Range Code,

(iii)    The next three characters (i.e. the seventh to the ninth character from the left) shall have a running serial number (i.e. 001 to 999) indicatingh the number alloted to the dealer in the particular range,

(iv)    The last character shall be "D" for the initial set of ECC codes alloted to the first 999 registered dealers in a range,

(v)    If the numbers of dealers in a particular range exceeds 999 then the alphabet "E" can be used as a suffix and the running serial number could again commence from 001 to 999.