Unjust enrichment bars excise refund where duty burden is passed on to the Electricity Board.

Refund of excise duty is barred where the claimant has passed the duty burden on to another person, because Section 11B allows refund only if the incidence has not been transferred. As the duty element had been recovered from the Electricity Board through advance payments, the appellants did not bear the burden themselves and the doctrine of unjust enrichment applied. The refund claim was therefore not admissible and was rightly rejected.

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Issues: Whether the appellants were entitled to refund of duty when the duty burden had been passed on to the Electricity Board, and whether the doctrine of unjust enrichment barred the claim under Section 11B of the Central Excise Act, 1944.

Analysis: The refund claim arose after the appellants recovered the duty element from the Electricity Board through advance payments. The material fact was that the duty burden was not borne by the appellants themselves but was passed on to another person. Under the amended provisions of Section 11B of the Central Excise Act, 1944, refund is admissible only when the claimant establishes that the duty incidence has not been transferred to any other person. Since the duty element had admittedly been passed on, the bar of unjust enrichment applied.

Conclusion: The appellants were not entitled to refund, and the claim was rightly rejected.

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