TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (3) TMI 794
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.... 2. Application stands disposed of. W.P.(C) 7295/2021 3. The present appeal assails a Show Cause Notice 3/69/ECA-II/AM-05/CLA dated 02.05.2005 (hereinafter 'the impugned SCN'), issued against the petitioner under the Foreign Trade (Development & Regulation) Act, 1992 (hereinafter 'FTDR Act'). 4. The petitioner also assails the legality and validity of the purported DEPB license cancellation letter No. 05/02/001/00061/AM- 16/ECA/CLA/360986 dated 07.08.2019, communicated to the Customs Department enclosing therewith the cancellation letters in respect of 38 DEPB scrips/licenses issued in favour of the petitioner. 5. It is the contention of the petitioner that during the period between 2002 and 2003, the petitioner was in the bus....
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....that the relevant documents which form the basis of the impugned SCN be supplied to it. The petitioner also participated in the personal hearing that was scheduled pursuant to the impugned SCN. While reiterating its request for supply of relevant documents, various correspondences were exchanged between the petitioner and the respondent after issuance of the impugned SCN and the hearing held in respect thereof. 8. When the petition came up for hearing on 19.12.2024, this Court, taking note of the background of the present petition expressed the view that non- adjudication of the show cause for decades was, by itself, a valid ground to set the same aside. The relevant observations in the order dated 19.12.2024 read as under:- "2.....
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....; and (ii) cancellation order dated 07.08.2019 was passed without affording an opportunity of hearing to the petitioner ; an opportunity of hearing was afforded only during the period 2005-07. 4. List for further arguments on 10.03.2025. 5. In the meantime, the respondents are directed to file the "38 DEPB Scripts Cancellation Letters" referred to in the communication dated 07.08.2019 addressed by the Foreign Trade Development Officer to the Commissioner of Customs (Preventive), filed as Annexure R-1 to the affidavit filed on behalf of the respondents, in terms of the order/s dated 23.08.2021 and 01.10.2021. Let the same be filed within a period of two weeks from today. 6. The respondents are also at liberty to fi....
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....he non-adjudication of the impugned SCN was conceded by the concerned Deputy Director General of Foreign Trade, who was present in Court on the said date. 13. It is also apparent that the cancellation order/letter dated 07.08.2019 was passed without any prior intimation/notice to the petitioner and almost 15 years after the impugned SCN was initially issued. The basis for issuance of the 38 DEPB Scrip cancellation letters has been set out in the impugned SCN. The factual premise of the same is strenuously contested by the petitioner. 14. The impugned cancellation order / letter dated 07.08.2019, in effect, is predicated on adverse conclusions drawn against the petitioner, without even adjudicating the impugned SCN issued as far back a....
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....thin a stipulated period of time "where it is possible to do so" cannot be countenanced as a license to keep matters unresolved for years. The flexibility which the statute confers is not liable to be construed as sanctioning lethargy or indolence. Ultimately it is incumbent upon the authority to establish that it was genuinely hindered and impeded in resolving the dispute with reasonable speed and dispatch. A statutory authority when faced with such a challenge would be obligated to prove that it was either impracticable to proceed or it was constricted by factors beyond its control which prevented it from moving with reasonable expedition. This principle would apply equally to cases falling either under the Customs Act, the 1994 Act or th....
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....y be noted that nothing prevented the respondents from proceeding ex-parte or refusing to reject such requests if considered lacking in bona fides. 87. We are further constrained to observe that the respondents also failed to act in accord with the legislative interventions which were intended to empower them to pursue further proceedings and take the adjudicatory process to its logical conclusion. We have in the preceding paragraphs of this decision taken note of the various statutory amendments which were introduced in Section 28 and were clearly intended to ratify and reinforce the jurisdiction which the Legislature recognised as inhering in them. The above observations are, of course, confined to those cases to which the Second....