2009 (1) TMI 237

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....he Central Excise Department made enquiries and launched a case against the company for evasion of excise duty. Immediately on issue of a show cause notice by the central excise authority to the company pursuant thereto, the company admitted the evasion with an explanation for the same and paid the excise duty. Thereafter, the adjudicating authority namely; the Collector of Central Excise, confirmed the demand for duty on the company and also imposed penalty of Rs. 1 lakh. To encourage the public to pass on information regarding evasion of duties, the Government of India announced a scheme for reward, which is produced as Ext. R1(a) along with counter affidavit of the respondent. As per the same, informants from public as well as the office....

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....by the respondents. According to them, the Reward Committee who went into the question of payment of reward for the particular information has decided that the advance reward already paid to the petitioner should be treated as the final reward. It is argued by the respondents that in view of Ext. R1(a) guidelines issued by the Government, for the determination of the amount of reward is in the discretion of the award committee and the Collector. According to them, the Reward Committee and the Collector has exercised that discretion correctly and decided that the amount to be paid as reward in this case is only Rs. 8.5 lakhs out of which 5 lakhs had been paid to the petitioner and Rs. 2.33 lakhs had been paid to the officers who conducted th....

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....ken, the extent and nature of the help rendered by the informer, whether information gives clues to persons involved in smuggling, or their associates etc., the risk involved for the Govt. servants in working out the case, the difficulty in securing the information, the extent to which the vigilance of the staff led to the seizure, special initiative, efforts and ingenuity displayed, etc. and whether, besides the seizure of contraband goods, the owners/organizers/financiers/racketeers as well as the carriers have been apprehended or not." 5. Going by the above, the question to be decided is whether the Reward Committee has taken a decision in its discretion in tune with the guidelines as quoted above. I am of opinion that in so far as th....