Useless Records Lying in Central Excise Offices
IN response to yesterday's DDT comments on mountains of useless papers lying in Central Excise offices, an alert Netizen pointed out that the Board had already issued instructions.
In Board's D.O. LETTER F.No. 207/09/2006-CX.6 dated 08.09.2006 from Member (CX & ST), CBEC, New Delhi, Board Member had stated,
It has been brought to the notice of the Board that the records seized in connection with offence cases are not being returned to the assessees in spite of repeated requests made by them. This not only causes undue hardship to the assessees, as they require such records for various statutory obligations, but it also unnecessarily occupies space in our offices.
2. In this regard, your attention is invited to the Board's Circular No. 42/88-CX, dated 24.05.1988 and No. 48/88-CX.6 dated 10.06.1988. As per these circulars, the documents / records which are not relied upon in the Show Cause Notice are required to be returned under proper receipt to the persons from whom they are seized. I wish to reiterate compliance of these instructions. In fact, the Show Cause Notice itself may incorporate a clause that unrelied upon records may be collected by the concerned persons within 30 days of receipt of the Show Cause Notice. The designation and address of the officer responsible for returning the relied upon records should also be mentioned in the Show Cause Notice.
We had covered this in – 16.11.2006.
Obviously, nobody is concerned and no officer ever mentions this in the Show Cause Notice. In fact, Board had been issuing such instructions from way back in the year 1988.