Cenvat credit - whether can be denied when original attested certified shipping bill gets misplaced?

PJ/Case Laws/2012-13/1005

Case: S.N.I. GRANITES V/s COMMISSIONER OF C. EX., SALEM

Citation: 2012 (25) S.T.R. 291 (Tri.-Chennai)

Issue:- Whether Cenvat credit can be denied where the original attested certified shipping bill get misplaced?

Brief Facts: - The assessee’s claim for refund of unutilized service credit in terms of Notification No. 5/2006-C.E., dated 14-3-2006 for the period Oct. '07 to Dec. '08 was returned for rectification of defects. The claimant resubmitted the claim on 1-4-2009 for the periods Apr. '08, Aug. '08, Oct. '08 and Dec. '08 and the same was returned to them on 20-5-2009 for attestation of the shipping bill by the Customs officer and for indicating certain particulars in the CENVAT credit register extract. The claim was resubmitted in June, 2009 once again without proper documents and further documents were filed on 3-7-2009 and 23-7-2009. The claim was, therefore, rejected as barred by limitation, computing the period of limitation backward from 23-7-2009.

Reasoning of Judgment: -The Tribunal held that there is no dispute that an incomplete claim was filed on 1-4-2009. The assessees had filed the original shipping bill and, therefore, the insistence of the department on getting the original certified appears to be misplaced. As regards extract of CENVAT credit register which is required to be filed, the defect pointed out, as seen from the letter of 20-5-2009 of the Assistant Commissioner, is that TR-6 challan was mentioned as the tax paying document instead of GAR-7 and the name and address of the input service provider was left blank as also the service tax registration number. I see force in The Hon’ble Tribunal held that the submission of the assessee that the mention of TR-6 challan as the tax paying document instead of GAR-7 is so minor that credit paying documents cannot be treated as incomplete for this reason. As regards the other defects, it has been clarified that when the column for name and address for input service provider was left blank, the assessee himself was the service provider and only in the event of provision of service by another person, it becomes incumbent on the part of the assessee to show their name and address and registration particulars. In this view of the matter, since the claim has to be treated as having been filed on 1-4-2009 and, therefore, within time, the impugned order is therefore set aside and in the absence of any finding on the merits of the claim, the case is remitted to the adjudicating authority for fresh decision in accordance with law after ex-tending a reasonable opportunity to the assessees of being heard in their defence.

Decision: - Appeal allowed by way of remand.

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PJ/Case Laws/2012-13/1005

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