By TIOL News Service

MUMBAI, JUNE 30, 2014. THESE are Revenue appeals against the Orders passed by the Commissioner(A) setting aside the orders of the adjudicating authority wherein duty demands were confirmed against the respondents. The Commissioner (A) had held in favour of the respondents both on merits as also on account of time bar.

In the appeal memorandum, it is the contention of the Revenue that the benefit of Notification No.64/95-CE dated 16/03/1995 could not have been extended to rough forgings of iron and steel and so the lower appellate authority has fallen in error. Incidentally, there is no challenge to the dropping of the demand on account of time bar.

Before the CESTAT the Revenue representative reiterated the grounds taken in the appeal memorandum.

The respondents submitted that as there is no challenge to the time bar aspect and the demands have been dropped on account of time bar also, apart from merit, the demands are not sustainable and so the appeals are not maintainable. Reliance is placed on the apex court decision in Balkrishna Industries - 2006-TIOL-117-SC-CX-LB in this regard.

The Bench observed -

“6.1 We observe that there is no challenge by the Revenue with respect to the dropping of duty demands on account of time bar. Since there is no challenge in this regard, the finding of the lower appellate authority has to be upheld with respect to time bar. Therefore, we find no merit in the appeal filed by the Revenue and accordingly the same are dismissed.”

In passing : One more instance of a frivolous appeal…which appeared as a dormant statistic for an entire decade in those MS Excel worksheets all these years…

(See 2014-TIOL-1151-CESTAT-MUM)