Appeal allowed due to time-barred notice for differential duty, penalty set aside.

The appeal was allowed with consequential relief as the Judge concluded that the show cause notice demanding differential duty was barred by limitation. The appellants had submitted necessary data for calculating the duty in 2002, and since they had been regularly filing returns and providing cost data, the notice should have been issued within the normal period. The penalty imposed on the Company and the Manager (Accounts) was set aside by the Commissioner (Appeals) as there was no contest on the duty demand, leading to the conclusion that the demand was indeed time-barred.

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Appeal concerns whether Revenue properly invoked the "longer period" in a show cause notice seeking differential duty for October 2000-March 2002 on captive consumption of intermediate product "Heat Shrinkable Sleeves (HSS)". Appellants manufactured non-excisable final goods but paid duty on HSS based on provisional costing and filed monthly returns; final cost data was submitted on 10-12-2002 and a Chartered Accountant's opinion on 28-6-2005. Tribunal finds the departmental data necessary to compute differential duty had been furnished in 2002, so the demand "ought to have been issued in the normal period." Invocation of extended limitation as suppression is unjustified where returns and cost data were filed. Appellate authority had set aside penalties; Tribunal reasons that if there was "no cause for imposition of penalty," the demand should be time-barred. Holding: the show cause notice is "barred by limitation"; impugned order lacks merit and appeal is allowed with consequential relief.

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