Officers Not Diligently Discharging Duties, Playing With Public Revenue, MoF Should Take Serious View: Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court has held that the Ministry of Finance is responsible for the officers who are not diligently discharging vital duties and who, in fact, are playing with the public revenue.

"We take judicial notice of a series of petitions reaching this Court on the ground that the concerned jurisdictional officers exercising such enormous powers not only under the Finance Act, 1994, but also under the other Central Acts, for reasons which are totally ill-conceived and contrary to law, have not adjudicated and/or taken forward the show cause notice for unduly long periods, and in some cases about 10 years," the bench of Justice G. S. Kulkarni and Justice Jitendra Jain observed.

The petitioner has challenged the lackadaisical approach of the Commissioner of Central Excise in not adjudicating the show cause notice issued 13 years ago, dated October 21, 2010. A show cause notice in question was issued to the petitioner by the respondent or department on October 21, 2010, alleging non-payment of service tax on the import of bank charges under banking and financial services and professional fees under management consultancy services.

The petitioner was called upon to show cause as to why service tax amounting to Rs. 7,79,52,151 to the show cause notice should not be demanded and recovered from it under the proviso to Section 73(1) of the Finance Act, as well as interest and penalty levied as set out in the show cause notice.

From August 2011 to February 2016, nothing was done by the department, and this was certainly a period prior to the GST regime being set into motion. In fact, nothing precluded the department from calling upon the petitioner and passing final orders on the show cause notice for a period of almost 5 years, from August 2011 to February 2016.

The petitioner contended that the law would not permit delayed adjudication of the show cause notice.

The court noted that there is no material whatsoever on record, including in the affidavit, that would in any manner justify such non-adjudication on the ground that it was not possible for the department to adjudicate the show cause notice for justifiable reasons either within a reasonable period or, more so, within a period as sub-section (4)(B) of Section 73 would manifest.

Case Title: UPL Limited Versus UOI

Case No.: Writ Petition No. 3063 Of 2021

Date: 22.08.2023

Counsel For Petitioner: Prakash Shah

Counsel For Respondent: Ram Ochani

Click Here To Read The Order