ORDER
Jyoti Balasundaram, Vice President
1. The above appeals arise out of the order of the Commissioner of Central Excise, Mumbai, by which he has confirmed duty demand of Rs. 26,17,065/- on clearances of excisable goods falling under Chapter 29 of the Schedule to the CETA, 1985, in excess of the exemption limit of Rs. 30 lakhs prescribed in the relevant SSI notification, in the Financial Year 1996-97 and 1997-98 and imposing a penalty of amount equal to duty upon the manufacturer and penalty of Rs. 10 lakhs upon the Director.
2. We have heard both sides. We find that the grievances of the appellant is one of contravention of the principles of natural justice as documents relied upon by the department were not made available for filing the counter reply and although preliminary reply was filed, it was incomplete as the appellants could not defend themselves, when the copies of documents relied upon in the show cause notice.
3. We note that the documents relied upon in the show cause notice have been made available to the appellants in November 2005, under the direction of the Bench, when the appeals were pending. We may also referred to letters written by the appellants seeking copies of the relied upon documents. Since the copies of the relied upon documents were made available to the appellants only during the hearing of the appeals before the Tribunal, we agree with them that they could not effectively defend themselves, as the documents were not made available to them at the relevant point of time. We, therefore, set aside the impugned order and remand the case to the jurisdictional Commissioner for fresh decision after extending reasonable opportunity of making submissions in their defence and also considering request, if any, made by them for cross examination for any of the persons whose statement are relied upon in the show cause notice. The appeals are thus allowed by way of remand.
(Dictated in Court)