The great Dispute Machine - What does Commissioner's Acceptance mean?
THIS is one of those strange but true cases.
An adjudicating authority of Central Excise demanded a duty of Rs. 20 lakh with equal penalty for shortage of inputs during physical stock taking. The Commissioner (Appeals) set aside the adjudication order on the ground that in a similar case, the Tribunal had allowed the appeal of the assessee.
The Superintendent in the Adjudication Section put up a note explaining the facts and also mentioned that the Tribunal Order referred to by the Commissioner (A) was under appeal to the Supreme Court.
His Assistant Commissioner simply signed the note very promptly on the same day.
The Additional Commissioner wrote, "Note at pre-page and above pl. In view of "A" above, we may appeal against the O-I-A."
The jurisdictional Commissioner wrote “accepted"and signed. After ten days the other Commissioner in the Committee of Commissioners simply signed the note-sheet.
The lower level officers thought that the Commissioner has accepted the order of the Commissioner (A) and they kept quiet. After some time, the Divisional officer wanted to find out whether the Commissioner had accepted the order of the Commissioner (A). Then they realised that the Commissioner had ‘ accepted ' the proposal to file the appeal and not the order of the Commissioner (A).
So a quick appeal was filed in the Tribunal with an application for condonation of delay and Stay of the lower order. By this time there was a delay of 199 days in filing the appeal.
The Tribunal dismissed the appeal.
Revenue does not keep quiet in such cases and took the matter in appeal to the High Court, which remanded the matter to the Tribunal to consider the condonation of delay.
In the second round, the Tribunal condoned the delay and admitted the appeal.
The Tribunal considered the appeal on merits and held: there is no application of mind by the Committee of Commissioners and they have merely appended their signatures to the note sheets prepared by the subordinate officers. In that view of the matter, the review order has to be held as not sustainable and consequently appeals have to be held as not maintainable. The Revenue's appeal is accordingly dismissed on the said ground.
This is not a stray case - this is replicated in almost all the Commissionerates, some in more sophisticated ways. See how much time and money must have been spent in pursuing a useless litigation right up to the High Court - all because the Commissioners were too busy to write a few words with clarity!
In this case, even assuming that the Commissioner accepted the proposal of the subordinate to file an appeal, just by writing "accepted", how did he expect the appeal to come up - obviously he wanted somebody else to do that.
Should we continue with this sham of a departmental adjudication?
The other day I saw an order by a Commissioner in which a person not connected with the case at all was imposed a penalty. I asked the assessee as to who this person was. The assessee simply laughed and said - this is a copy and paste mistake; the Superintendent had picked up this from another order pertaining to another company.