CBEC- Treat your retired officers with a little more respect. Civil servants - neither civil nor servants!
It is really pathetic to see the Department badly losing cases in the Tribunals and High Courts because the Departmental view is not always properly presented. The learned Additional Solicitor General in the High Court who is paid a pittance by the government and who is no authority on Central Excise/ Customs/Service Tax can hardly argue a case with force. The government has hit upon the bright idea of hiring retired senior officers to represent the Department before judicial and quasi-judicial forums. Not every retired Chief Commissioner or Board Member is qualified or competent to defend the Department in the Tribunals or High Courts, but there are certainly some very good retired officers whose services, the department can use and who would be glad to assist the Department rather than take up the case and cause of the evaders and smugglers.
But this whole scheme is again yet another arrogant bureaucratic procedural nonsense. Our civil servants who are neither civil, nor servants, have a very high opinion of themselves. They want these retired senior experts to crawl before them for the pittance they pay, for having the privilege of defending the department in important cases.
One Commissionerate wanted these retired officers to apply to the benign Additional Commissioner to be empanelled. He has been kind and did not insist that the applicant should end his application with, "I shall be ever grateful to the benign Additional Commissioner for giving me an opportunity to serve you by being a special counsel".
Extracted below is a notice put by the Haldia Commissionerate: