Excise recovery by coercion stayed

The bench, which had earlier issued a stay order till today on recovery of the excise duty, disposed of a bunch of petitions after the excise department admitted that there were large number of appeals pending before the commissioner.

The standing counsel, Meera Bhatia and Rekha Palli in a written statement submitted before the court, said chief commissioner of customs and central excise, Delhi zone had issued direction on March 24 to all the commissioners of central excise in Delhi and Chandigarh not to resort tocoercive measures where excise dues are less than Rs 1 lakh.

"Even in other cases involving excise dues between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, instructions have been given not to resort to coercive methods till the matter is finally resolved by the central board of excise and customs," the reply said. The excise department admitted that there were over 1950 appeals pending before the Commissioner (appeals) in Delhi and 2257 in Chandigarh.

Taking this into account, the Central Board of Excise was requested on March 11 to appoint one more Commissioner (appeals) at both the cities, the department reply said adding that the pendency of appeals went up due to statutory charges made in Modvat rules in 1994.

The petitioners’ counsel had brought to the notice of the court that there was considerable delay in appointing the successor of commissioner of appeals in the capital resulting in accumulation of cases.

There are provisions for appeal in the Excise Act before the Commissioner Central Excise (appeals) againstany order of adjudication passed by the assistant commissioner on realisation of excise duty. The counsel had argued that any "coercive recovery" would defeat the petitioner’s right of filing an appeal before the commissioner.