Under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, an appeal from the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to the Supreme Court lies only on a question of law and must be filed within 45 days, with no more than 15 additional days on sufficient cause. The Code's special limitation regime overrides inconsistent mechanisms under the Companies Act and cannot be enlarged by Supreme Court Rules. A party cannot postpone limitation by delaying a certified-copy application; pre-application time counts, while time requisite for the registry to supply the copy is excluded, after which the remaining statutory time resumes.

Section 74 requires evidence that wrongful input tax credit availment resulted from fraud, wilful misstatement, or suppression of facts with intent to evade tax. Mere self-assessed availment of ineligible credit, an audit-related mismatch, or failure to reply to an audit enquiry or final audit report does not alone establish suppression. The Department must identify and prove the deliberate conduct relied upon. A show-cause notice confines the grounds of demand, and appellate or review proceedings cannot sustain a demand on a new ground absent from that notice.

Inter-Commissionerate transfer may affect an officer's seniority and consequential promotional prospects, without diminishing the value of actual service, acquired expertise, or professional integrity. The designation actually held remains a truthful professional description and should not be treated as the sole measure of professional worth. Central Excise service can provide practical legal training in statutory provisions, procedures, notices, and adjudication, informing subsequent advocacy.

GST appellate pre-deposit under Section 107(6) requires full payment of admitted tax, interest, fine, fee and penalty, while the prescribed percentage applies only to remaining disputed tax. The Karnataka High Court interpretation discussed treats the omission of interest, penalty, fine and fee from clause (b) as deliberate. Appellate authorities therefore cannot calculate the percentage-based deposit on the entire disputed demand or add financial conditions beyond the statutory language.

Judicial discipline requires subordinate tax authorities to apply binding appellate orders in later matters involving materially identical facts, unless there is a relevant distinction, change in law, or operative stay. Repeating a demand already rejected by a higher forum causes avoidable litigation and expense. A reasoned decision dropping an unsustainable demand may properly protect Revenue interests, since demand value alone does not establish correctness. Officers should record the applicable precedent, factual correspondence, and any stay or legal change, while vigilance scrutiny must distinguish dishonest conduct from an honest legal error.

GST adjudication requires actual consideration of an electronically filed reply before tax liability is determined. Treating a DRC-06 response as absent and confirming a demand ex parte denies a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Fresh adjudication must assess the reply, supporting records and material departmental evidence, afford a personal hearing, and give reasons addressing submissions capable of affecting liability. Allegations of inadmissible input tax credit do not displace these safeguards, and a procedural defect does not itself establish credit eligibility or negate alleged contraventions.

Arbitral interest granted on an unclaimed claim exceeded the scope of the reference and was set aside as a severable award component, without disturbing the remaining award. Early-completion bonus remained payable because the contractual extension for force majeure-related delay adjusted the justified completion date but did not bar bonus; the tribunal's plausible contractual interpretation attracted no Section 34 interference absent patent illegality, public-policy breach, lack of evidence, or inadequate reasons. Reimbursement of GST actually payable or paid on awarded sums also remained operative, with taxability depending on whether each component represented consideration for work or compensation for breach, delay, loss, or damages.

Revisional jurisdiction under Section 32(1) of the Andhra Pradesh Value Added Tax Act, 2005 requires a recorded finding that the appellate order is prejudicial to the interests of revenue. An appellate remand for fresh adjudication under the applicable legal position does not, without an identified revenue prejudice, justify revision. A revisional order setting aside such remand without recording that prejudice is unsustainable.

Schedule II(d) petroleum products are excluded from the ordinary multi-stage VAT mechanism, not from the Tripura Value Added Tax Act, 2004. The proviso to section 3(1)(b) subjects specified goods, including petrol and diesel, to notified first-point tax without input tax credit. Petroleum-product sales turnover, including the sales price and tax levied under the VAT Act, remains within the base for road development cess. The cess regime allows deductions for turnover previously subjected to cess and prohibits a more-than-one-stage levy.

Invocation of the extended recovery mechanism for tax short-payment requires a notice to allege fraud, wilful misrepresentation or suppression and disclose foundational facts supporting the assessing authority's satisfaction. Mere tax mismatch or short-payment is insufficient, and mechanical recitation-or complete omission-of those grounds cannot support recourse to that mechanism. A notice lacking those allegations and factual basis is legally invalid, leaving the resulting proceedings without jurisdiction.

MRP-based assessment of basic excise duty and National Calamity Contingent Duty under Section 4A lacked legal support from 1 July 2017 to 1 February 2022 because the relevant notification continued to refer to the repealed Central Excise Tariff Act, 1985, without a corresponding post-GST amendment or established continuing operation. Valuation of the excisable goods consequently remained governed by Section 4. Duties and applicable interest are payable on Section 4 valuation, with amounts already paid subject to adjustment. The Section 11AC(1)(a) penalty was set aside.

Defective goods received under job-work challans under Rule 4(5a) of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 may be rectified and returned without duty liability where no CENVAT credit was availed on the duty paid on their return. In those circumstances, the subsequent return of rectified goods does not attract duty, and no penalty is imposable.

CENVAT credit is admissible on duty-paid MS angles, channels, joists, beams and similar steel items where statutory records and technical evidence establish their use in fabricating capital goods, including a DRI kiln and related factory equipment, used to manufacture dutiable final products. Rule 2(k) treats such items as eligible inputs when deployed for fabrication of capital goods within the factory. Item-wise usage records and a Chartered Engineer's certificate support the required nexus between the steel items, machinery fabrication and dutiable production.

Central excise demand founded on deemed manufacture could not survive because its essential premise-a retrospective reclassification of cranes from Tariff Item 8426 12 00 to Tariff Item 8426 41 00-had failed. Classification under Tariff Item 8426 41 00 was necessary to bring the cranes within Serial No. 100A of the Third Schedule and trigger deemed manufacture for activities involving parts and spares. A show cause notice seeking only a classification change lacked statutory support under Section 11A; the original classification therefore remained undisturbed. The consequential duty, interest and penalty demand was set aside.

Penalty under Rule 26(2) of the Central Excise Rules, 2002 is confined to an individual or naturally living person and cannot be imposed on a private limited company as an artificial corporate entity; the corporate penalty was therefore set aside. Allegations that invoices were issued without actual supply require reliable evidentiary support. Where invoices were recorded in returns, payments were received through banking channels, and the principal reliance was on a delayed vehicle owner or driver statement while evidence was absent for several invoices, the alleged paper supplies were not established and could not sustain a penalty.

SVLDR Scheme benefit available for a principal party's dispute can correspondingly extend to persons separately penalised in the same circumstances, even without independent scheme applications. Comparable Tribunal decisions supported extension of that benefit, and no contrary authority was identified. Separately penalised appellants consequently qualify for corresponding scheme relief and consequential relief.

Extended limitation cannot sustain a CENVAT credit demand where eligibility turns on a bona fide interpretative dispute concerning inputs used to fabricate or support capital goods, rather than suppression or deliberate non-disclosure; the extended-period demand is therefore unsustainable. Inputs used in fabrication, repair or maintenance of capital goods, including integral structural supports, may qualify for CENVAT credit. Normal-period entitlement, however, requires reliable evidence of the inputs' actual use, such as adequate documentary material or Chartered Engineer certification. Credit for the normal period remains subject to factual verification where that evidentiary burden is not discharged.

Extended-period limitation required factual adjudication because the assessee disputed whether the demand was time-barred. The Tribunal had stated that the extended period applied but had not addressed the limitation objection or resolved the underlying factual dispute from the material on record. No final determination on limitation was made. The Tribunal must examine the available factual record and decide the limitation issue before sustaining the demand on the extended-period basis.

CENVAT credit on furnace oil used in a captive power plant remains available where the electricity is exclusively consumed by connected manufacturing units and a jetty forming part of final-product manufacture. Separate registrations and physical distance between units do not defeat eligibility where electricity is neither sold nor diverted outside the manufacturing operations. Inputs may generate intermediate electricity through a job-work arrangement, and non-compliance with prescribed job-work procedure is a procedural irregularity that does not override substantive credit entitlement. As the credit is substantively admissible, penalties for wrongly availed credit are unsustainable.

Fixed facility charges recovered with vacuum insulated storage tanks formed part of the transaction value of gas supplies where they were included in the assessable value for central excise duty under binding Board clarification. As the charges were subjected to excise duty as part of the gas value and identical arrangements had been previously determined on that basis, they were not separate consideration for supplying tangible goods for use without transfer of possession and effective control. Consequently, service tax could not be demanded on those charges as a taxable tangible-goods supply service.