Why is the CESTAT partial and the Supreme Court not?

By Vijay Kumar

Appeal partially allowed

The other day a friend asked me, “if they are partial, should they mention it in their orders?” I had a tough time explaining to him that they were not partial, but the appeals were allowed only partly.

When an appeal is allowed not wholly, the Tribunal Benches normally state that the appeal is partially allowed. Partial means biased, prejudiced - a decision that was partial to the plaintiff.. Of course it also means partly. But since we have high hopes of the judiciary being impartial, these partially allowed orders sound a little annoying. Interestingly, we checked up over two thousand orders of the Supreme Court of India pertaining to taxation and did not find a single instance where the Apex Court used the phrase “partially allowed”, while we found that the Tribunal benches frequently used this phrase. When ‘partly allowed’ conveys the meaning better, what is the need to use ‘partially allowed’ which sounds most un judicial?

Is it that the language of the Supreme Court is more precise than that of the Tribunals? We found that in several judgements the Supreme Court had used the phrase “partially allowed”, but that was to cite that the Tribunal had “partially allowed” the appeal.

It is not as if the Supreme Court had never used the phrase “partially allowed”. We could get about 50 cases in the last sixty years when the Supreme Court “partially allowed” an appeal.

Maybe their lordships should consider banishing the concept of partially allowing an appeal and ensure that appeals are partly allowed.

Today we are carrying a judgement of the Tribunal where the appeal was allowed partially.

With growing competition from China and India not just in low tech and low skilled industries but also in the high tech and high skill, having the best educated, best-skilled and best-trained workforce in the world is not for Britain an option in a global economy, but a necessity.- from the speech by the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown at the mansion house, London, 21 June 2006

I believe that no civil servant should be allowed to work in the Finance Ministry unless he has taken a Foundational Course which emphasises one truth. The truth is that stability in tax laws is to a nation what stability in family life is to an individual; and therefore, where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. But stability is anathema to the North Block. Our Finance Ministry is filled with bureaucrats who eternally mistake amendment for improvement and change for progress. — Nani Palkhiwala