Rule 28 - Production of additional evidence before appellate authority or Appellate Tribunal

Limits on filing new evidence on appeal: allowed only for specified exceptions, with written reasons and rebuttal opportunity.

Additional evidence before the appellate authority or the Appellate Tribunal is generally barred to the appellant, permitting only evidence previously produced before the adjudicating authority or prior appellate authority, except where relevant evidence was wrongly refused, could not be produced due to sufficient cause, is relevant to a ground of appeal but was prevented by sufficient cause, or the impugned order was made without sufficient opportunity to adduce such evidence; this limits expansion of the evidentiary record on appeal. Any admission of additional evidence requires written reasons to be recorded; this conditions admissibility on a documented justification. Where additional evidence is admitted, the adjudicating authority (or authorised officer) must be given reasonable opportunity to examine it, cross-examine witnesses, and lead rebuttal evidence; this safeguards procedural fairness and adversarial testing. The appellate authority or Tribunal may independently direct production of documents or examination of witnesses; this preserves its power to dispose of the appeal effectively.