CSR is grounded in trusteeship and in companies' responsibilities to employees, communities and the environment, rather than shareholders alone. The framework includes the Unspent CSR Account, multi-year projects, certification of fund utilisation and impact assessment. CSR is intended to leverage corporate resources, technology and expertise, rather than merely supplement public expenditure. Needs-based project selection, community participation, need and social-impact assessment, implementing-agency capacity, resource pooling and technology-enabled monitoring are emphasised to move from compliance and spending towards evidence-based transformation.

Section 16(2)(c) of the CGST Act requires more than routine or mechanical invocation against purchasing dealers for supplier non-payment of tax. Its application should rest on circumstances warranting action and a demonstrated purchaser link to the supplier's default. Relevant evidence includes invoices, e-way bills, receipt and use of goods, and payment to suppliers. Retrospective registration cancellation does not automatically justify invocation. Proceedings against the selling dealer, clear show-cause particulars, natural justice, and reasoned orders recording facts and law are emphasised.

Rule 96(10)'s omission without a saving or sunset clause removes the restriction from all pending proceedings. The Supreme Court applied the principle that deletion without saving treats an omitted rule as if it had not existed; the General Clauses Act does not preserve proceedings under an omitted rule, and a GST Council recommendation of prospective operation is advisory. Pending export refund claims, demands, recovery actions, and appeals founded solely on the restriction therefore lack a surviving basis.

Effective electronic communication of GST notices and adjudication orders requires more than formal portal publication. Proposed portal enhancements are expected to show the dates on which orders were passed and uploaded, and to record e-mail and SMS notification triggers. The measures are intended to provide taxpayers with a transparent chronology of issuance, uploading, and electronic communication, addressing concerns that notices or orders placed under an additional-notices tab may not effectively reach taxpayers.

GST classification disputes involving animal-feed nutritional supplements ordinarily require statutory appellate review where the issues depend on comparison of goods, show-cause notices, tariff entries, exemption conditions and evidence. Section 75(7) prevents confirmation of a demand on grounds or products materially outside the notice, but an alleged mismatch may require factual examination. Classification under Heading 2309 or Heading 3004 depends on composition, function, use, labelling and technical material. Section 107 enables review of classification, exemption, procedural fairness and computation issues, subject to appellate compliance and pre-deposit requirements.

GST arrest authorisation permits the Commissioner, by order and upon reasons to believe, to empower an officer to arrest a person who has committed specified offences. Arrest extends to prescribed categories of tax evasion, wrongful availment or utilisation of input tax credit, and wrongful refunds where the relevant monetary thresholds are exceeded; it also covers the specified offence under clause (f) and repeat offending. Every arrest must comply with criminal-procedure requirements.

Section 122(1A) reaches an unregistered individual who retains the benefit of specified invoice or input-tax-credit contraventions and causes the transaction to be conducted. Personal liability requires proof of both retained benefit and control, direction, or causation; designation or managerial participation alone is insufficient. The mechanism does not create automatic vicarious liability for directors or employees. Effective from 01.01.2021, it applies prospectively according to the date of each underlying transaction, not the date of the show-cause notice or adjudication.

Arbitral seat supplies the juridical framework and identifies courts with supervisory jurisdiction, whereas venue is only the physical hearing location. Where no place is expressly designated as the seat, hearings at a place for the arbitrator's convenience do not establish that place as the juridical seat. Jurisdiction over an arbitral award challenge depends on the agreed or determined seat and competent-court factors, including the place of contractual performance. A prior arbitrator-appointment proceeding does not, by itself, make its location exclusively determinative.

Writ jurisdiction generally cannot be used to challenge an order-in-original on merits after the statutory appellate remedy has lapsed. An efficacious statutory remedy must be pursued unless exceptional grounds, such as lack of jurisdiction or the deciding authority's incompetence, are established. Expiry of the appeal limitation period and any pre-deposit requirement do not justify bypassing the appellate process. Without a jurisdictional or competence-based challenge, a merits challenge is not maintainable in writ jurisdiction.

Vacant possession of unused SEZ premises is separated from monetary disputes arising under a sub-lease. Where the agreed final deadline for commencing operations was missed and the premises remained unused, the occupant must vacate after supervised inventory and removal of movables, enabling re-sub-lease to another entrepreneur. Claims for rent, maintenance, interest, damages, termination consequences, and infrastructure improvements require arbitral determination, with inventory and valuation assistance where necessary. Statutory questions concerning rent-control and SEZ regimes need not be resolved to release premises from continued non-use.

Section 39(1) scrutiny of a continuously registered dealer's returns requires prior issuance of the prescribed Section 35 notice; returns filed under Section 35(2) alone do not satisfy that condition. The five-year assessment limitation in Section 57 applies to Section 39 scrutiny and cannot be bypassed through that mechanism. Delegation of the Commissioner's Section 39 power to a Superintendent of Taxes requires an Official Gazette notification under Section 26 and Rule 3; internal orders or circulars are insufficient. Jurisdictional defects caused by absent notice or valid delegation permit recourse to writ jurisdiction despite the alternative remedy under Section 65.

Revenue neutrality may defeat an excise-duty demand alleging undervaluation where goods cleared to a sister unit are used as raw materials and the recipient takes full CENVAT credit of the duty paid. As valuation differences cause no net revenue loss in those circumstances, the demand lacks merit. The extended limitation period is also unavailable when clearance and valuation particulars have been disclosed in regularly filed ER-1 returns, because that disclosure negates suppression of facts.

Rule 8 governs valuation of excisable goods used for captive consumption in manufacturing other articles, even where part of the same goods is sold to independent buyers. Its substitution extended coverage to goods wholly or partly not sold and removed the differential valuation anomaly affecting identical captive clearances. The substituted provision operates retrospectively as a remedial measure. Accordingly, captive clearances are valued under Rule 8 rather than Rule 4 where some production is independently sold.

CENVAT credit for engineering, testing, recruitment, training, IT, professional, travel and captive-power-plant services is available where the services facilitate and are integrally connected with manufacturing operations. Before 1 April 2011, satisfaction of the inclusive limb of the input-service definition did not require a direct nexus with manufacture. After the amendment, credit remains available where services have a direct or indirect nexus with manufacture and clearance and do not fall within an exclusion. Captive-power-plant services remain connected with manufacture when substantially all electricity is used in production. Credit cannot be denied on grounds absent from the show cause notice, including unsupported allegations concerning ISD invoices or non-correlatable documents.

Clandestine-manufacture and under-invoicing allegations require legally admissible evidence and independent corroboration. Electronic records must satisfy the certification and production safeguards under Section 36B, while private or third-party records require a verified link to the assessee. Electricity consumption or alleged theft cannot establish unaccounted production without plant-specific scientific norms and evidence connecting consumption to quantified manufacture and clearance. Alleged production must also be physically achievable within installed plant capacity. Statements cannot prove their contents unless the mandatory procedure under Section 9D is followed. Without these evidentiary foundations, excise liability, interest, and penalty lack a sustainable basis.

Transport of coal in tipping trucks, with loading by contractors' pay loaders, does not constitute cargo handling service where the activity is merely shifting coal and does not involve an independently provided loading, unloading, packing or unpacking service. A service-tax demand cannot be sustained when the show-cause notice invokes a charging provision no longer in force and omits the applicable provision operative when the notice was issued. Reference to a later statutory provision does not cure reliance on the deleted charging provision. The proposed levy therefore fails both on taxable-service classification and on the validity of the charging basis pleaded in the notice.

Known statutory encumbrances disclosed in a secured-asset sale notice and sale certificate must be discharged before the purchaser can receive the property free from them. Rules 9(6) to 9(10) of the Security Interest (Enforcement) Rules require disclosure of known encumbrances and deposit of the amount needed to satisfy them; a purchaser with express notice cannot remove recorded departmental dues without payment. Priority of secured creditors over government dues does not displace those mandatory sale requirements. A departmental attachment restricting transfer, mortgage, or charge constitutes an encumbrance. Issuance and registration of a sale certificate do not end the secured creditor's statutory rights while its debt remains unrecovered and recovery proceedings continue.

Review petitions concerning clubbing of clearances for SSI exemption, lifting of the corporate veil, pervasive financial and management control, aggregation, suppression of material facts, and the extended limitation period were dismissed for lack of merit. The dismissal leaves undisturbed the treatment of interconnected entities and their clearances under the applicable SSI exemption framework.

For commercial or industrial construction services, the gross amount charged for service tax valuation excludes goods or materials supplied free of cost by the service recipient. Such supplies cannot be added to the assessable value unless legislation specifically requires their inclusion. The valuation principle therefore confines taxable service value to amounts charged for the taxable service, excluding the value of free-supplied materials.

Non-submission of a board resolution is a curable procedural defect that does not defeat the substantive right of appeal. Dismissal of a numbered appeal solely for that defect, without a defect notice and reasonable opportunity to rectify it, is impermissible. Statutory pre-deposit requirements may be met through amounts paid during audit or investigation before filing an appeal where those amounts are appropriated towards the confirmed demand. The first appellate authority must therefore adjudicate the challenge on merits after hearing the assessee and considering all available grounds.