2019 (9) TMI 1370

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.... 128,84,03,023/- against the appellant under Section 11A(1)/11A(4) of Central Excise Act, 1944, along with interest under Section 11AB/11AA of the Act. Penalty of Rs. 128,84,03,023/- under Section 11AC of the Act read with Rule 25 of the Central Excise Rules, 2002 has also been imposed upon the appellant. 2. The appellant is engaged in the manufacture of iron and steel products, at its own iron ore mines, inter alia, at Joda in the district of Keonjhar in the State of Odisha. Iron ore extracted from the said mines is converted into iron ore concentrates and most of them are cleared to the factory of the appellant at Jamshedpur, upon payment of excise duty, for captive consumption therein in the manufacture of dutiable final products. A par....

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.... interest and by imposing equivalent amount of penalty upon the appellant. Being aggrieved, the instant appeals have been preferred by the appellant. 4. It is contended on behalf of the appellant as under: (a) The impugned order is contrary to the Department's own stand on the issue involved, which is recorded in the order itself by the Commissioner. No reason or basis has been disclosed as to why the Commissioner was deviating from the said firm stand of the Department, set out in para 5.4 of the impugned order itself, which supports the appellant's contention as regards the untenability of the allegations made in the show cause notice. (b) The impugned order also suffers from factual inaccuracies. Inspite of the fact that it was the ....

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....ed facts on record of the instant case, the extended period of limitation contained in the Proviso to Section 11A(1)/11A(4) of the Act has or can have no manner of application. The appellant, as detailed in the replies to the show cause notices, had been duly filing its RT-3 returns with the jurisdictional Central Excise authorities during the said period disclosing therein the clearance of the said goods at the values/prices contained therein, to the steelworks at Jamshedpur and TML respectively. As acknowledged by the jurisdictional Central Excise authorities themselves, in October 2007 itself, the appellant had submitted copy of the Audit Report prepared by its Cost Accountant as per CAS-4 in respect of the Joda mines which contained det....

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....s of the instant appeals. 7. We find that as a part of the replies to the show cause notice the appellant had annexed its letter dated October 25, 2007 under which the Cost Audit Report for the period 2006-07 was submitted to the Senior Audit Officer, CRA-3 Bhubaneswar, the endorsement on which confirmed due receipt thereof. We also find that the Department's own stand, set out in para 5.4 of the impugned order, that the cost of production of iron ore concentrate, prepared and signed by a Cost Accountant on 05.07.2007 arrived at on 110% basis as per CAS-4 in terms of the Board's circular in respect of goods transferred to the appellant's Jamshedpur factory was duly made available to the Department. Hence, the finding that the cost of produ....