TMI Blog2015 (7) TMI 894X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... wed and obeyed the mandate of the statute and tendered the Adjudication Order either on the party on whom it was intended or on its authorized agent and on one else. - miscarriage of justice has taken place, in that the Authorities/Courts below have failed to notice the specific language of Section 37C(a) of the Act which requires that an Order must be tendered on the concerned person or his authorized agent, in other words, on no other person, to ensure efficaciousness - Decided in favour of assessee. - Civil Appeal Nos. 5631-5632 of 2015, Arising out of SLP (Civil) Nos. 22905-22906 of 2014 - - - Dated:- 20-7-2015 - Vikramajit Sen And Shiva Kirti Singh,JJ. For the Petitioner : Mr Vinay Garg, Adv., Mr Uday Singh, Adv. and Mr Vibhor ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 8377; 3,45,629/- along with penalty of a like amount was imposed under Section 11A of the Act. We reiterate that in these Appeals we are not concerned with the legality of that Order. The Appellant filed an Appeal against the said Adjudication Order in the Office of the Commissioner (Appeals), Customs and Central Excise (Meerut-II) asserting that consequent upon the initiation of the recovery proceedings by the Department, the Appellant learned for the first time, on 26.7.2012, of the passing of the aforesaid Order dated 30.3.2012. The case put forward is that the Adjudication Order dated 30.3.2012 appears to have been served on an employee of the Appellant, named Sanjay, who according to the Appellant was a Kitchen boy employed on dai ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... may underscore the important facet of the Appeal, viz., that the Appeal filed by the Appellant has not been considered on merits at all. The Appellate Authorities as well as the High Court failed to keep in perspective the essential issue - namely - to ascertain the date from which limitation was to be calculated. Learned counsel for the Appellant has consistently relied upon Section 37C of the Act, which is reproduced for facility of reference: 37C. Service of decisions, orders, summons, etc.- (1) Any decision or order passed or any summons or notices issued under this Act or the rules made thereunder, shall be served,- (a) by tendering the decision, order, summons or notice, or sending it by registered post with acknowledgment ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... spondents to serve the Adjudication Order on a kitchen boy , who is not even a middle level officer and certainly not an authorized agent of the Appellant. The version of the Appellant that it learnt of the passing of the Adjudication Order dated 30.3.2012 only when, in the course of the recovery proceedings, the Department s officials had visited its unit, is certainly believable. The fact that, firstly, the Order had not been passed in the presence of the Appellant, so as to render its subsequent service a formality, and secondly, that the Order came to be passed after an inordinate period of eight months should not have been ignored. This fact should not have been lost sight of by the Authorities below as it has inevitably led to a misc ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... a Pradesh AIR 1954 SC 322, State of UP v. Singhara Singh AIR 1964 SC 358, Babu Verghese v. Bar Council of Kerala (1999) 3 SCC 422 and more recently in Hussein Ghadially v. State of Gujarat (2014) 8 SCC 425. As observed by this Court in Babu Verghese, it is the basic principle of law long settled that if the manner of doing a particular act is prescribed under any statute, the act must be done in that manner or not at all. The Inspector who ostensibly served the copy of the Order should have known the requirements of the statute and therefore should have insisted on an acknowledgement either by the Appellant or by its authorized agent. The Inspector had a statutory function to fulfil, not a mere perfunctory one. The Appeals are accordingly ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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