TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2015 (12) TMI 1055
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....dicating authority. Prayer has also been made for directing the Chief Commissioner, Delhi Zone to assign the adjudication of all the show cause notices issued to the petitioner to the Commissioner of Service Tax, Delhi. In the alternative, prayer for waiving off the payment of pre-deposit under Section 35F of the Central Excise Act, 1944 (in short, "the Act") for filing appeal before the Tribunal has been made. 2. A few facts relevant for the decision of the controversy involved as narrated in the petition may be noticed. The petitioner is a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 by the name and title of M/s Himalaya Construction Company (P) Limited located at New Delhi. Respondent No.2 is the Chief Commissioner of Central Exci....
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....Panchkula vide letter dated 23.9.2014 informed the petitioner that the Chief Commissioner through his order dated 14.8.2014 had transferred the said two cases to the Commissionerate of Central Excise and Service Tax Panchkula and thus the jurisdiction for adjudication of the case had been taken away from the Commissioner of Service Tax, Delhi. The third and fourth show cause notices for Rs. 98,95,590/- and Rs. 3,96,14,945/- to the petitioner dated 22.5.2014 and 28.5.2015 were issued being answerable to the Commissioner of Service Tax, Delhi II. According to the petitioner, two show cause notices had been kept answerable to the Principal Commissioner of Central Excise and Service Tax Panchkula and other two show cause notices to the Commissi....
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....this Court holds: a. In India the judicial trend has always been to record reasons, even in administrative decisions, if such decisions affect anyone prejudicially. b. A quasi-judicial authority must record reasons in support of its conclusions. c. Insistence on recording of reasons is meant to serve the wider principle of justice that justice must not only be done it must also appear to be done as well. d. Recording of reasons also operates as a valid restraint on any possible arbitrary exercise of judicial and quasijudicial or even administrative power. e. Reasons reassure that discretion has been exercised by the decision maker on relevant grounds and by disregarding extraneous considerations.....
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....annot be doubted that transparency is the sine qua non of restraint on abuse of judicial powers. Transparency in decision making not only makes the judges and decision makers less prone to errors but also makes them subject to broader scrutiny. (See David Shapiro in Defence of Judicial Candor (1987) 100 Harward Law Review 731-737). n. Since the requirement to record reasons emanates from the broad doctrine of fairness in decision making, the said requirement is now virtually a component of human rights and was considered part of Strasbourg Jurisprudence. See (1994) 19EHRR 553, at 562 para 29 and Anya vs. University of Oxford, 2001 EWCA Civ 405, wherein the Court referred to Article 6 of European Convention of Human Rights which req....