ORDER
H.R. Syiem, Member (T)
1. Both counsels were heard.
2. The Collector of Central Excise, Allahabad, says in his order C. No. VI(68)271/83/X-l/13011 dated 1.10 (no year) that Notification 5/81-CE dated 21.1.1981 cannot have retrospective effect to empower him to relax absence of declaration required in para 1 under Notification 201/79 CE, for periods before 21.1.1981, the day Notification 5/81 CE came into operation.
3. This is not an appropriate rendering. To condone the non-declaration of an assessee under Notification 5/81-CE does not involve any retrospectivity, whatever the time. To condone such a lapse, is to go back into the past; but the Collector, I am sure, will not condone an “inadvertence” the assessee proposes to commit in the future.
4. The power to absolve is endowed on an authority to write off a remissness. To exercise that power, is never retrospect : it is only necessary to possess that power. Though this power of relaxation involves a looking back to past events, the wielding of it is strictly in the present. The legate will be confronted by a past oversight, but he will wield his prerogative only in the present. It is bootless to hold a power like this and to say that it can be used only for future lapses. Does that mean the Notification 5/81-CE could have no application in the first few days after it was inaugurated? That would be an absurdity I am not ready to admit.
5. To repeat, no retrospectiyity is present in exercising the power of relaxation conferred by Notification 5/81-CE, whatever be the time when the offence was committed.
6. The Collector’s order is not correct and is set aside. He shall now rehear the application and pass an appropriate order, founding it upon his possession of the power conferred by Notification 5/81-CE even for a non-declaration under para 1 of Notification 201/79 CE that took place before 21.1.1981.