Appeal to Tribunal - Abolish Committees
THE institution of committees of Commissioners and Chief Commissioners to review the orders of Commissioner (Appeals) and jurisdictional Commissioners to decide on appeals to the CESTAT has miserably failed and is best abolished. This system has complicated matters and is a huge waste of money and time with absolutely no improvement in the quality of decisions. The field officers in the CBEC have over the years perfected a system of stymieing all good intentions of the Government and the Board. When indiscriminate Show Cause Notices were being issued, the Government amended the Act to stipulate that Show Cause Notices are to be approved by Chief Commissioners. Indiscriminate Show Cause Notices continued to be issued - now with the approval of the Chief Commissioner. They had to drop the provision as nothing good came out of it.
The Committees of Commissioners and Chief Commissioners were brought into the statute with the hope that two heads are better than one and a Committee consisting of two Commissioners or two Chief Commissioners would not routinely decide to appeal but would have the courage to hold that no appeal is necessary. But sadly they ensured that the good intentions of the Board are defeated.
This is how a committee works.
An order is passed by a Commissioner, a copy of which reaches the Chief Commissioner's office. A superintendent in the Chief Commissioner's office finds fault with the Commissioner's order and suggests that the order should be appealed against. He also prepares a draft review order. The Chief Commissioner approves it and sends the file to the other Chief Commissioner, who is the second Member of the Committee – and the second Chief Commissioner routinely signs it and sends the files back with some of his own review files which will be signed by the other member of the committee. There is an unwritten understanding that 'I sign your files, you sign mine'. Lo and behold, the Committee has decided that the Commissioner's order is not legal and proper. The same is the case with Committee of Commissioners. The Committee never meets and discusses the issue, unless if one of them wants to travel.
And because of these committees, you find Chief Commissioner, Bhopal holding additional charge of Bhubaneswar and that kind of jokes because the same Chief Commissioner cannot be two members of the same committee. Of course there was the case of one Commissioner holding two charges held himself to be the committee and signed twice in his capacity as two commissioners!
There is no point in continuing with this farce and it will save some time, paper and money if these committees are abolished. To simplify matters, we can stipulate by law that any Commissioner or Commissioner (Appeals) passing an order in favour of the assessee should mark a copy of his order to the Tribunal and the Tribunal shall take it as an appeal and serve notice on the other party. Tremendous amount of paper, money and time can be saved.
A Committee is defined as; Individuals who can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.