2026 (5) TMI 1443

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....ant on invoices issued by M/s Chettinad Port Services Pvt Ltd, Chennai (service provider), during the period June, 2008 to March, 2009. 2. The brief facts of the case are that the appellants engaged in stevedoring operations for M/s Tamil Nadu Electricity Board at Visakhapatnam, had outsourced certain activities such as sprinkling of water, cleaning of storage yard and supervision of handling operations to the said service provider. The service provider raised five invoices on the appellant company at Chennai, whereas, services were received at Visakhapatnam unit of the appellant. The appellant availed Cenvat credit on the said invoices during the half year ending September, 2009. The department denied the credit on the ground that invoi....

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....has reiterated the findings of the adjudicating authority. 5. Heard both sides and perused the records. 6. The issue for consideration is whether the appellants are eligible to avail Cenvat credit on the impugned invoices despite procedural deficiencies and discrepancies in the invoices or otherwise. It is evident that the services were actually received by the appellant and the service tax on the impugned invoices has been paid by the service provider. The services are input services used in the course of business. 7. The adjudicating authority has denied the credit primarily on account of procedural irregularities in the invoices, such as absence of registration number, invoices issued prior to registration, mismatch in the addre....

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....nd appellant has simply utilised the credit at Vatva instead of distributing it to various units. As submitted by the learned counsel, during the relevant period, there was no restriction for utilisation of such credit without allocating proportionately to various units. The omission to take registration as an Input Service Distributor can at best be considered as procedural irregularity and in view of the decisions cited, has to be considered sympathetically. Further, it is also noticed that appellant has not got any extra benefit by doing this. In fact from the statement of Shri Chandresh C. Shah, as explained that above Cenvat credit available to them, 20% of service tax payable only was paid and balance was paid in cash. In fact, proper....