2018 (2) TMI 218

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.... `36,39,466/- was reversed on 23.08.2012. Suitable intimation was sent to the revenue. Revenue sought interest on the said amount for the period between availment of credit and reversal of credit. Aggrieved by the said order, the appellants approached the Commissioner (Appeals) who upheld the demand of interest. Aggrieved by the said order, the appellants are before Tribunal. 3. The main argument of the appellants is they had availed the credit but not used the same. The appellants relied on the decision of the Hon'ble High Court of Karnataka in Bill Forge Pvt. Ltd. - 2012 (279) ELT 209 (Kar) which was followed by the Tribunal in Gokaldas Images (P) Ltd. - 2012 (278) ELT 590 to assert that no interest is payable if they have reversed....

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....be payable from the date the CENVAT credit has been utilized wrongly for according to the High Court interest cannot be claimed simply for the reason that the CENVAT credit has been wrongly taken as such availment by itself does not create any liability of payment of excise duty. Therefore, High Court on a conjoint reading of Section 11AB of the Act and Rules 3 & 4 of the Credit Rules proceeded to hold that interest cannot be claimed from the date of wrong availment of CENVAT credit and that the interest would be payable from the date CENVAT credit is wrongly utilized. In our considered opinion, the High Court misread and misinterpreted the aforesaid Rule 14 and wrongly read it down without properly appreciating the scope and limitation the....

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....ized to straighten the crudities or ironing out the creases to make a statute workable. This Court has repeatedly laid down that in the garb of reading down a provision it is not open to read words and expressions not found in the provision/statute and thus venture into a kind of judicial legislation. It is also held by this Court that the Rule of reading down is to be used for the limited purpose of making a particular provision workable and to bring it in harmony with other provisions of the statute. In this connection we may appropriately refer to the decision of this Court in Calcutta Gujarati Education Society and Another v. Calcutta Municipal Corporation and Others reported in (2003) 10 SCC 533 in which reference was made at Para 35 t....

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....e not static but dynamic. This infuses fertility in the field of interpretation. This equally helps to save an Act but also the cause of attack on the Act. Here the courts have to play a cautious role of weeding out the wild from the crop, of course, without infringing the Constitution. For doing this, the courts have taken help from the preamble, Objects, the scheme of the Act, its historical background, the purpose for enacting such a provision, the mischief, if any which existed, which is sought to be eliminated .............................................................This principle of reading down, however, will not be available where the plain and literal meaning from a bare reading of any impugned provisions clearly shows that it ....