ORDER
Jyoti Balasundaram, Vice President
1. The Revenue is aggrieved by the order of the Commissioner of Central Excise (Appeals), Bangalore, who has allowed the appeal of the respondent herein against the rejection of claims filed by them for refund of the following amounts:
Rs. 03,86,496/-
Rs. 06,58,569/-
Rs. 12,17,588/-
Rs. 15,98,080/-
Rs. 18,09,842/-
Rs. 20,05,520/-
Rs. 23,19,345/-
Rs. 19,10,085/-
Rs. 24,41,711/-
2. The respondent holds a Registration Certificate for payment of Service Tax under the category of Banking and other Financial Services – Credit card services. The respondent has been paying service tax on the value of the taxable services billed but collected less than the amount billed, in view of default by certain card holders. They sought refund of the excess service tax paid by them. The claims were rejected on the ground that the document produced for substantiating the plea that they had not recovered the amount of which refund was sought by them from their customers, was CD, which was not admissible evidence as per the provisions of Section 11B. The Commissioner (Appeals) accepted the contention of the respondent herein that CD was evidence. He further went on to find that the officers of department had conducted a test check and satisfied themselves with the methodology adopted for calculation of the amount, and himself checked the entries of the CD with reference to the refund claims and also perused the Chartered Accountant’s certificate submitted by them with reference to the correctness of the claims of refund. After being satisfied on the basis of the above records of the genuiness of the claim, he sanctioned the refund by setting aside the rejection of the refund claim by the adjudicating authority.
3. The ground raised in the argument is the same ground on which the refund claim was rejected initially, viz. CD was not admissible evidence. We find that this contention is no longer tenable, as the department itself has accepted that CD is an admissible evidence by reference to the provisions of Section 4 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Rule 5(1) of the Service Tax Rules providing that the records including computerised data as maintained by the assessee shall be accepted. Therefore, the next question for consideration by us is whether the Commissioner (Appeals) had satisfied fully about the genuiness of the refund. This position stands answered by the department itself. After rejection of the refund claims by the Asstt. Commissioner, the assessee filed appeal against the same and the Commissioner (Appeals) sanctioned the refund claims the revenue sought stay of the operation of the impugned order, verification was carried out by the Asstt. Commissioner and after verification, the Order No. 24/05 has been passed by him by which he has rejected claims for the month of July 03 to September, 03 totaling Rs. 2828207/-as time barred and sanctioned refund of the balance amount of Rs. 1,15,19,028 under the provisions of Section 11B of the Central Excise Act road with Section 83 of Finance Act, 1994. The Asstt. Commissioner has considered in detail the accounting procedure of the assessee and only thereafter, he has sanctioned the refund of the amount as above mentioned which would show that complete and thorough verification was carried out by the Department. Therefore, the plea taken by the Revenue before us in the present appeal that the Commissioner (Appeals) did not fully satisfy himself about the genuiness of the refund claims, does not survive, in view of the above. Since the documents have boon verified and found to be genuine, there is no around for holding that the refund is not admissible to the respondent. The plea of unjust enrichment raised by the Ld.R is also not acceptable in the light of the Tribunal’s order in Prachar Communications Ltd. 2006 (2) STR 492 and CCE v. Standard Chartered Bank 2006 (3) STR 751, wherein, it has been held that the provisions of Section under challenge do not apply in the case of service tax.
4. In the light of the above discussions, there is no warrant to interfere with the order passed by the Commissioner (Appeals) sanctioning refund and we accordingly uphold the same and reject the appeal.
5. Cross objection filed by the respondent also disposed of accordingly.