The Chennai bench of Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) directed re-adjudication on the dispute on eligibility for refund/rebate under excise notification.
M/s. eShakti.com Private Limited, the appellant is engaged in the manufacture and export of ready-made garments. During manufacture and export, they had utilised several input services and since they were eligible for refund/rebate of the Service Tax paid on input services under Rule 5 of the CENVAT Credit rules, 2004, and they believed that they were eligible for the refund in terms of both Notification No. 27/2012-C.E. dated 18.06.2012 and Notification No. 41/2012-S.T. dated 29.06.2012, they filed five different claims for refund of the above input services.
The said claims for refund came to be rejected on the grounds of non-jurisdiction, non-submission of documents, etc. It appeared that the appellant preferred an appeal before the first appellate authority confirmed the rejection of their claims, against which it appears that they filed appeals before this Bench.
Upon remand, the original authority considered the claim of the appellant afresh and thereafter granted a partial relief of refund. The adjudicating authority had gone beyond the scope of the orders of the CESTAT / Commissioner (Appeals), where no specific direction was given to consider the claims under Notification No. 41/2012-S.T.
On the other hand, the Departmental Representative contended that the Bench had remanded all the claims back to the file of original authority for the limited purpose of allowing the appellant to produce all supporting evidence and then decide the issue after causing verification.
The adjudicating authority therefore went beyond the scope of remand and entertained the appellant’s request for refund under a different Notification and therefore the said refund order was not as per law.
Further, it was contended that the first appellate authority had observed that it was unambiguously clear from the order of the Bench that the Tribunal had examined the appeals only on the ground of non-submission of evidence by the appellant in their support and thus gave the remand order for passing a de novo order, with a limited purpose of giving an opportunity.
The first appellate authority has, in a nutshell, held that the original authority should not have entertained the claims of the appellant under Notification No. 41/2012 (supra) which was made for the first time and hence the same was time-barred.
The first appellant authority further held that though he agreed that the export incentives granted to the exporter should not be denied merely on procedural lapses, the same would not bestow upon the exporters to file claims under inappropriate notifications, wrong jurisdiction and without adhering to or complying with the substantial conditions prescribed under the notifications.
The bench of P. Dinesha (Judicial Member) and M. Ajit Kumar (Technical Member) has observed that set aside the impugned order and remitted the matters back to the file of the Commissioner (Appeals).
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