Monday, March 27, 2017

Excise dept. can’t blame advocate for its own failure to remove office objections in appeal: HC

Excise department (Revenue) filed the appeal before the High Court with the plea to quash order passed by Registry dismissing its appeal seeking time to remove office objections.

High Court held as under: -

1) All the appeals filed by the revenue were entertained by condoning delay and there was enough time to remove office objections, but those were not removed.

2) Revenue officials were playing a blame-game. To cover up their lapses and deficiencies, they turned around and blamed their Advocates. They were of the opinion that their Advocates ought to have informed them and at every stage of the matter, particularly as to which office objections had to be complied with or were to be removed.

3) If the officers were unaware of legal procedures, then they had to be in touch with their Advocates. They could not expect that the Advocate himself would come to their office and apprise them as to what further had to be done after the filing of an appeal.

4) While allowing the appeal, we are expecting that this blame game will not be played further and Revenue officials must communicate with their Advocates periodically or rather regularly apprise themselves on the stages their Appeals have to go through. - [2017] 79 taxmann.com 268 (Bombay)

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