Natural justice in service tax demands requires supply of relied-upon documents before liability is adjudicated.

Non-supply of the documents relied upon to determine service tax liability was treated as a prima facie breach of natural justice because it deprived the assessee of an effective opportunity to defend the demand. The dispute concerned service tax on air travel agent services, and the record indicated that the liability had been computed without furnishing the relied-upon material to the appellants. The matter was remanded to the original authority for a fresh de novo decision after supplying those documents, and the appeal and stay application were disposed of accordingly.

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Issues: Whether the matter required remand on account of violation of principles of natural justice arising from non-supply of the documents relied upon for determining the service tax liability.

Analysis: The demand related to service tax on air travel agent services for the period April 2000 to March 2004, and the appellants complained that the documents used to compute the liability were not furnished to them. In the absence of those relied-upon documents, the appellants were held to have been deprived of an effective opportunity to defend the case, constituting a prima facie breach of natural justice.

Conclusion: The matter was remanded to the original authority for fresh decision de novo after supplying the relied-upon documents, and the appeal and stay application were disposed of accordingly.

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