Hitech Projects Pvt. Ltd. Vs Union of India (Gujarat High Court)
In the present case, the petitioner doesn’t get fair opportunity of being heard to present his point of view due to lockdown. The show-cause notice also proposed to impose a penalty on one of the partners of the firm under Rule 26 of the Rules.
Hence High Court states that the impugned communication in Form SVLDRS-3 is hereby quashed and set aside. The matter is remitted to the respondent No.3 herein i.e. the Designated Committee, Ahmedabad-South for fresh hearing on the issues in question. The respondent No.3 shall fix a particular date of personal hearing and intimate the same in writing to the writ applicants. The writ applicants upon receipt of such intimation shall appear before the respondent No.3 and make their submissions. Thereafter, the respondent No.3 shall pass a fresh order in accordance with law.
FULL TEXT OF THE HIGH COURT ORDER /JUDGEMENT
1 By this writ application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the writ applicants have prayed for the following reliefs:
“[A] Your Lordships be pleased to issue a Writ of Certiorari or any other appropriate Writ, direction or order, quashing and setting aside order of the Designated Authority (Respondent no.3) in form of SVLDRS-3 (Annexure-A) made under Sabka Viswas (Legacy Dispute Resolution) Scheme, 2019 thereby directing the Respondents, their servants and agents to treat the declarations / applications fled by the petitioners under Sabka Vishwas (Legacy Dispute Resolution) Scheme, 2019 valid and accept the payment already made as sufcient compliance of the scheme and further direct them to issue discharge certifcate.
[B] Your Lordships be pleased to issue a Writ of Mandamus or a Writ in the nature of Mandamus, or any other appropriate writ, direction or order, to the respondents, their servants and agents to accept the declarations fled by the Petitioners, and further directing the Respondents to accept the payment already made as sufcient compliance of the scheme and also direct to give personal hearing and consider the case afresh and issue discharge certificates under Section 127(8) of the Finance Act, 2019.
[C] Pending hearing and fnal disposal of the present petition, Your Lordship may be pleased to direct the Respondent no.3 to consider the submission made by the Petitioners and give personal hearing or through virtual platform and thereafter issue Form SVLDRS-3 afresh.
[E] An ex-parte ad-interim relief in terms of prayer “B” above may kindly be granted.”
2 The facts giving rise to this writ application may be summarized as under:
2.1 The writ applicant No.1 is a company engaged in the work of civil construction since 1996-97. It appears from the materials on the record that a show cause notice No.V.38/15-54/OA/2016 dated 02.05.2016 was served upon the writ applicants calling upon them to show cause as to why the Central Excise duty amounting to Rs.27,57,942/- for the period between April, 2011 and 31.12.2015 should not be recovered under Section 11A(4) of the Central Excise Act, 1944. In other words, the writ applicants were called upon to show cause as to why the RMC falling under the Central Excise Tarif Heading 38245010 should not be demanded and recovered with interest. The writ applicants were also called upon to show cause as to why the excisable goods valued at Rs.15,05,92,859/- should not be confscated under Rule 25(2) of the Central Excise Rules, 2002 and why the penalty under Rule 25(1) Rules, 2002 read with Section 11AC(1)(c) of the Act, 1944 should not be imposed.
2.2 The above referred show cause notice also proposed to impose penalty on one of the partners of the frm viz. Shri Tejas Dalal under Rule 26 of the Rules.
3 We need not go into any further details about the proceedings which came to be initiated by the Department against the writ applicants in the year 2016 as we are of the view that this litigation can be put to an end by appropriate directions to the respondents.
4 We may only observe that the show cause notice referred to above ultimately came to be adjudicated and an order in original dated 13.04.2017 was passed by the Assistant Commissioner, Central Excise, Division-V, Ahmedabad confrming the demand of duty amounting to Rs.27,57,942/- under Section 11A(4) of the Act, 1944 with interest under Section 11AA of the said Act. The record further reveals that the adjudicating authority imposed redemption fne of Rs.5,00,000/- in lieu of the confscation of the excisable goods valued at Rs.15,05,92,859/-manufactured and consumed by the writ applicants under Section 34 of the Act, 1944.
5 It appears that the order in original referred to above came to be challenged by the writ applicants by two separate appeals. It is the case of the writ applicants that they deposited Rs.2,06,855/- as a pre-deposit equivalent to 7.5% of the total demand of the duty. The details in this regard has been furnished in the memo of the writ application. The same reads thus:
