Central Excise Superintendents get Adjudication Powers
THE CBEC has granted powers of adjudication on Superintendents of Central Excise. They can now adjudicate cases involving a duty up to one lakh rupees in individual SCNs.
They would be eligible to decide cases involving duty and/or CENVAT credit upto Rs. 1 Lakh in individual SCNs. They would be eligible to decide cases involving wrong availment of CENVAT credit upto a monetary limit of upto Rs. 1 Lakh. They can also adjudicate Show Cause Notice proposing only imposition of penalty under Rule 26 and 27 of the Central Excise Rules, 2002 or Rule 15 and 15A of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004. But they cannot adjudicate on excisability of a product, classification, eligibility of exemption, valuation and cases involving suppression of facts, fraud etc.
Why are they given powers to adjudicate only Central Excise cases? What about Service Tax and Customs? Maybe that will be given soon.
Board wants the Commissioners to redistribute the pending cases. And now here is a joke from the Board. The Circular says, “The jurisdictional Commissioners should ensure that the work regarding re-allocation of pending cases, issuance of corrigendum to the Show Cause Notices, transfer of relevant files and records, etc., should be completed within a month. A compliance report in this regard should be sent by the Commissioner to the zonal Chief Commissioner, who in turn, should submit a report to the Board by 1.6.2010, certifying that all the work regarding re-allocation of cases has been completed.”
Now this circular is dated 18th May and the Board wants the redistribution to be completed within a month and then a compliance report to be sent. But the compliance report should be send by 1.6.2010 (within 12 days)! It is because they give such impossible instructions that the instructions receive scant respect in the field. Now since the report cannot be sent by 1.6.2010, it will not be sent even by 1.6.2011.
CBEC Circular No. 922/12/2010-CX., Dated: May 18, 2010