2018 (11) TMI 30

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....rvice tax, during 01.04.2015 to 01.03.2016, on 'Works Contract service' taxable under the Finance Act, 1994 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), provided to various departments of the Government of Uttar Pradesh, as vide Notification No.06/2016-ST dated 01.03.2015 effective from 01.04.2015, Sl. No. (a), (c) & (f) of the entry 12 of the Notification No.25/2012-ST dated 20.06.2012 (Mega Exemption) were omitted and the services specified therein, provided to the Government, a local authority or a governmental authority, became taxable. However, vide Notification No.09/2016-ST dated 01.03.2016, the aforesaid exemption was restored by inserting entry 12A in the Mega Exemption. 3. Further, Section 102 was inserted in the Act, vide the Finan....

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.... be made within a period of six months from the date on which the Finance Bill, 2016 receives the assent of the President. 4. Subsequently, the appellants, in terms of Section 102 of the Act, applied for the refunds, under Section 11B of the Central Excise Act, 1944 as made applicable to the Service Tax matters vide Section 83 of the Act, before their respective Deputy/Assistant Commissioner, Central Excise. 5. During examination of the refund claims, it was noticed that (i) the appellants did not provide any documents to correlate their refund claims with the conditions specified in Section 102 of the Act, (ii) they failed to produce any documentary evidence to show that they had not passed on the incidence of Service Tax and (iii) t....

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....as without jurisdiction. As such he concluded that the Assistant Commissioner/Deputy Commissioner was not having any jurisdiction to pass the said refund claims. Surprisingly, even after observing, as such, the Original Adjudicating Authority Orders' have been upheld by him. When the Original Adjudicating Authority was not having any jurisdiction to deal with the refund claims, I really fail to understand as to how the same could have been rejected by the Original Adjudicating Authority. Such rejection would also be without jurisdiction, in which case the orders passed by the Original Adjudicating Authority would be null and void. 9. Further Commissioner (Appeals) has observed that appellant had taken the centralized registration only....

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....refund claims on merits inasmuch as they did not have any jurisdiction. He further observes that they should have rejected the refund claims only on the ground of jurisdiction and should have referred the same to the authority having jurisdiction to pass these refund claims. In spite of observing as above, the Commissioner (Appeals) has upheld the impugned orders to the extent of rejecting the refund claims on the ground that the same were filed in the wrong jurisdiction. 12. The question of jurisdiction raised by the Revenue is not about the basic jurisdiction of the Assistant/Deputy Commissioner to deal with the refund claims. The objection is on area based jurisdiction. If the Revenue was of the view that the refund claims should have....