Departmental Adjudication- a farce; Are they really afraid of Vigilance?

By Vijay Kumar

SPEAKING in a meeting organised by a Trade Association, CESTAT President Justice Raghuram said,

"This is a compulsive evidence of a deep pathology in departmental adjudication. Two interpretations are possible - one that the judges are not able to understand the law as well as the commissioners are able to - one interpretation, which is comfortable for the departmental family……..If the pro-family interpretation is to be assumed as hallucinatory, then we are left with the inescapable conclusion that something is pathologically, terminally and seriously wrong with our departmental adjudication.

Departmental adjudication is a blasphemy. If a revenue collecting Chief Commissioner is writing the confidential report of an adjudicating Commissioner or Superintendent something seriously wrong has taken place in the adjudication process of our country."

What makes brilliant officers, who have passed the toughest examination in the world and who are imparted the most expensive training in the world including a couple of foreign trips at State expenses, act idiotic and perverse while passing adjudication orders? There was a Commissioner who held that the Solicitor General did not explain the case properly to the Supreme Court and so the Supreme Court was not able to understand the law properly and so the law was what the Commissioner thought it to be and not what the Supreme Court interpreted. The other day a judge was heard asking in the Court, "Does your Commissioner think that he knows the law better than all the judges of the Supreme Court and all the Members of his Board?". Here was a Commissioner who refused to follow both the Board and the Supreme Court.

The DG, Vigilance states that only 18 cases (that is 0.001%) have been taken for vigilance scrutiny. Madam, how many cases are decided against the revenue, for you to take up vigilance scrutiny?

It has now become a norm that all adjudicating authorities invariably pass orders in favour of revenue in at least 95% cases. Where is the question of any vigilance?

I made a small quick study from the CESTAT cases reported by us, which shows:

These are only reported decided cases and will just give an idea.

Vigilance should initiate action not for dropping cases, but for confirming silly demands on illegal grounds, with absolutely unsound reasons. These adjudicators don't bring in any revenue but cause immense damage to the system. Already people have started losing faith in the departmental adjudication and an administration that cannot command public faith loses its right to exist in a democratic system. Such a system will perish under its own illegal unbearable weight.

Vigilance should work for preventing such a calamity - there is no danger from adjudication orders against revenue - you can appeal; you have to worry about those nonsensical orders in your favour which has made you a diabolical State machinery.