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By Vijay Kumar

Central Excise

Commissioner (Appeals) passing an order that is totally extraneous to the issue set aside by Tribunal

ADMITTED that the provisions of Section 35A of the CEA '44 permit the Commissioner (A) to enhance penalty or fine in lieu of confiscation or confiscating goods of greater value or reduce the amount of refund but not before following the principles of natural justice. Also admitted that the Commissioner(A) under the very same section can order the appellant to pay any duty not levied or paid, short levied or short paid or erroneously refunded but not before he follows the principles of natural justice & issues a notice within the time limit specified in section 11A of the CEA '44 .

But the section, at least as on date, does not allow the Commissioner (A) to impose any interest on an assessee.

However, the Commissioner of Central Excise (Appeals), Pune thinks otherwise. He imposed an interest under section 11AB on an assessee who had filed an appeal before him against an order denying him refund!

Commissioner (A) passing contrary orders in respect of same order-in-original – Tribunal finds it a prima facie case to grant complete waiver of pre-deposit

IT was only recently in DDT-803 that we carried the inside information that the CBEC Member was not happy with 10% success rate of the Departmental appeals in CESTAT . It is revealed from the said communication that the Member desired the need to sensitize field formations in this regard. Accordingly, the letter ends with the following message – The Chief Commissioners are, therefore, advised to take necessary measures so that frivolous appeals or weak appeals are not filed and drafting of appeals can also be improved.

Although the above advise is a welcome one, at the same time why does the Board feign ignorance of the fact that these appeals are based on review orders which are ordered by the Committee of Chief Commissioners/Commissioners [from May 2005] & earlier it was the Board themselves who passed these Review orders.

It is common knowledge that appeals are usually a cut & paste of the Review Orders – so the answer is – a good review order will fetch a good appeal.

Sometimes, appeals are filed just for the sake of filing them – accepting anti-revenue orders is not my forte kind of logic & the sensible second Committee Member has to sign on the dotted line!

See our columns tomorrow for the judgements