2021 (4) TMI 365

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....llika Joshi and Mr. Vaibhav Joshi, Advs. For R-2. Mr. Harpreet Singh, Senior Standing Counsel with Ms. Suhani Mathur, Advocate for R- 3 to 5, Mr. Satish Aggarwala, Mr. Gagan Vaswani and Mr. Jasneet Jolly, Advocates for R-3 to R-5. ORDER The limited issue which arises for consideration in the captioned writ petitions concerns the applicability of the instruction dated 21.12.2015 bearing F. No. 1080/09/DLA/MISC/15/757 [in short "2015 instruction"] and the Master Circular dated 10.03.2017 [in short "2017 Master Circular"], issued by Central Board of Excise & Customs, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India [presently, known as "Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs"]. In this context, in particular, the petitione....

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....aving heard the petitioners in that matter i.e. Back Office IT Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and the contesting respondents, who were represented by Mr. Satish Aggarwala, we have directed the parties to hold the pre-show cause notice consultation, in line with the mandate of paragraph 5 of the 2017 Master Circular. In that case, the contesting respondents via Mr. Satish Aggarwala had raised the defence that it was a case involving "prevention" (one of the exceptions, given in the 2017 Master Circular, where pre-show cause notice consultation is not required to be held). After having disagreed with the stand taken by the contesting respondents, we have issued certain directions; which are referred hereinbelow. 3.3. Insofar as the captioned writ petit....

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....graph 5 of the 2017 Master Circular. 4. Given this position, we are inclined to dispose of the captioned writ petitions, by issuing the directions similar to the ones which were issued in W.P.(C) 5766/2019: (i) The contesting respondents will serve an appropriate communication on the petitioner indicating therein the date, time and venue at which they intend to convene a meeting for holding pre-show cause notice consultation. (ii) The concerned officer will accord a personal hearing to the authorized representative of the petitioner. (iii) The concerned officer would allow the petitioner to make submissions with regard to the merits of the matter including the aspect pertaining to the jurisdiction. The concerned officer will, after h....