Procedural circular cannot override notification conditions for GTA abatement where separate declaration satisfied substantive compliance.

75% abatement for Goods Transport Agency service under Notification No. 32/2004-ST was held available where the assessee furnished a separate declaration that no Cenvat credit had been availed. The notification required substantive compliance but did not require the declaration to appear only in the consignment note. A Board circular could not add a mandatory procedural condition absent from the notification or defeat the substantive abatement benefit. Separate declaration was therefore treated as sufficient compliance, and the Revenue's challenge failed.

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Issues: Whether 75% abatement under Notification No. 32/2004-ST was available for Goods Transport Agency service when the declaration that no Cenvat credit had been availed was not made in the consignment note, but was furnished separately and the notification itself did not prescribe that form of declaration.

Analysis: The Notification required the substantive conditions for abatement to be satisfied, but it did not state that the declaration had to be made only in the consignment note. The Board's Circular dated 27.7.2005 prescribed such a procedure, yet the notification was not amended to incorporate that additional requirement. The Tribunal held that a circular cannot impose a mandatory condition that is absent from the notification and cannot be used to deny a substantive benefit otherwise available under the notification. Following earlier Tribunal decisions, the separate declaration was treated as sufficient compliance with the notification.

Conclusion: The abatement was held admissible and the Revenue's challenge was rejected.

Final Conclusion: The substantive exemption benefit under the notification could not be defeated by a procedural requirement introduced only through a circular, and the Revenue's appeals failed.

Ratio Decidendi: A departmental circular cannot add a mandatory procedural condition to a notification so as to deny a substantive exemption or abatement benefit when the notification itself does not prescribe that condition.

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