Nominal delay in excise duty payment does not justify forfeiture of instalment facility when duty and interest are paid.

A nominal delay in payment of excise duty, where the duty is later discharged from the CENVAT account with interest and no prejudice to the revenue is shown, does not justify forfeiture of the facility to pay duty in instalments. The amended CENVAT scheme permitted later-earned credit to be used for clearing the outstanding duty, and short delays were treated as too insignificant to trigger deprivation of the statutory facility. On the facts described, the forfeiture order was unsustainable.

---

---

Issues: Whether the assessee could be deprived of the facility to pay central excise duty in instalments on account of short delays in payment, where the duty was later discharged from the CENVAT account with interest.

Analysis: The petition concerned a narrow controversy on the effect of a few days' delay in payment of duty. The earlier order had already examined the amended CENVAT scheme and held that there was no prohibition on using later-earned CENVAT credit to discharge the outstanding duty, provided interest was paid. The impugned order proceeded on the same facts, despite the delay being very small and the interest having already been paid. Applying the principle that the law does not concern itself with trifles, the Court treated the defaults as too insignificant to justify deprivation of the instalment facility.

Conclusion: The assessee could not be denied the facility to pay duty in instalments on the basis of the short delays, and the impugned forfeiture order was unsustainable.

Final Conclusion: The challenge succeeded and the order imposing forfeiture of the duty-payment facility was set aside.

Ratio Decidendi: A merely nominal delay in payment of excise duty, when the duty and interest have been paid and no prejudice is shown to the revenue, does not warrant forfeiture of the statutory facility to pay duty in instalments.

---