2014 (9) TMI 332

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....ioner of Central Excise, Thane-1. The respondent also applied for stay of recovery of the duty pending the Appeal. Such application was placed before the Tribunal and the Tribunal proceeded by the consent of both sides took up the Appeal itself and disposed it of finally. It is this final order which is challenged before us. 3. Mr. Bhate, learned counsel appearing for the appellant submitted that the Revenue may have agreed to the disposal of the Appeal at the stage of consideration of the stay application but, beyond that there is no agreement. In other words, the manner in which the Appeal is disposed of and the conclusion has no consent of the Revenue. Therefore, a substantial question of law would arise and based on the manner of ....

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....etween the parties, the Tribunal may dispose of an Appeal finally at the stage of hearing of stay application or while disposing of and deciding the stay application. However, beyond that, the Tribunal is not expected to pass a cryptic order and by not assigning cogent and satisfactory reasons for its conclusion. It is too well settled to require any reiteration that appeal is a creature of the statute. A right of Appeal would confer in a litigant so as to enable the litigant to assail the original order on law and facts. The Court of Appeal is therefore expected to apply its independent mind and not endure same finding or conclusions in the original order. In the case of Patesinghrao v. R.V. Deshmukh, 1981 Mh.L.J. 936, it has been observed....

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.... general terms. The appellate authority has to decide the appeal as a quasi-judicial authority. To say the least the appellate authority cannot act mechanically as a mere rubber stamp. In the present case in memorandum of appeal various substantial questions of fact were raised by the appellants. All these contentions are disposed of by the appellate authority by observing : "I have gone through the appeal memo, the records produced before me. The Joint Director has given sufficient reasons in para 5 of his order why the action of supersession is necessary. It is not necessary for me again to reproduce all these facts. I totally agree with him. I therefore, pass the following order" In view of this cryptic order it is difficult to say tha....

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....-judicial process and this rule must be observed in its proper spirit and mere pretence of compliance with it would not satisfy the requirement of law. The Government of India also failed to give any reasons in support of its order rejecting the revision application. But we may presume that in rejecting the revision application it adopted the same reason which prevailed with the Collector. The reasons given by the Collector, was, as already pointed out, hardly satisfactory and it would, therefore have been better if the Government of India had given proper and adequate reasons dealing with the arguments advanced on behalf of the appellants while rejecting the revision application. We hope and trust that in future the Customs Authorities wil....