2018 (1) TMI 880

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....ners should not be relegated to the appeal route. In particular, the petitioners point out that in the previous round of litigation, the Customs Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal ('CESTAT' for short) had given certain directions to the departmental authorities to bring relevant documents on record and to proceed further. While passing fresh order, the adjudicating authority committed two errors. Firstly, it recorded that the petitioners had not brought such documents on record which was not the duty of the petitioners to do and secondly, even proper hearing was not granted. 2. In the context of the requirement to bring additional documents on record as suggested by CESTAT, by order dated 26.12.2017 we had made following observations:....

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....or as to their applicability and implication." Upon remand, the Commissioner of Customs (Kandla) acting as adjudicating authority passed a fresh order of adjudication without these documents on record. The stand of the department appears to be two fold. One is that the Customs department had written to DRI, Mumbai for supplying such documents. However, the documents were not supplied. Second is that it was the duty of the noticees to produce such documents. Be that as it may, the proceedings were decided without such documents being brought on record. Learned counsel for the petitioners submitted that subsequently when the petitioners applied directly to DRI, Mumbai, in case of petitioner no.2, such documents have been supplied. Judgm....

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..... It is further submitted that the other documents i.e. "Part F of the Advance Licenses" DEEC Book Nos 137173 and 134131 in respect of M/s. PA International and M/s. Blend Syntec (Petitioner 1 and Petitioner 3) is available on records. The copy of the same is enclosed herewith as Annexure "A". Whereas Part F of the DEEC Book No. 122530 and 122532 in respect of M/s. Sharan exports and M/s. Santosh Textiles (Petitioner 2 and Petitioner 4) are not available." 4. The stand of the department emerging from such affidavit thus is that certain documents are not available, the rest are already on record. If the case of the petitioners is that they are in possession of copies of any of the additional documents, though the department contends that t....