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2018 (4) TMI 357 - AT - CustomsRestoration of appeal - principles of Natural Justice - ex-parte order - service of notice - mention of wrong address - Held that - it is apparent on record that the hearing notice was not sent to Advocate on record by Registry of this Tribunal. The address of the applicant was also changed therefore the hearing notice was neither delivered to applicant nor to the Advocate, accordingly ex-parte order was passed. In these circumstances, we are of the view that ex-parte order was passed by this Tribunal needs to be restored - appeal restored.
Issues: Restoration of appeal due to non-delivery of hearing notice to the Advocate and applicant.
In this case, the primary issue revolved around the restoration of an appeal that was dismissed due to the non-delivery of the hearing notice to the Advocate and the applicant. The Advocate representing the applicant highlighted that the hearing notice was not sent despite the address being available. Additionally, the address of the applicant had changed, leading to the non-delivery of the notice. On the other hand, the Revenue argued against restoring the appeal, citing the judgment in the case of Balaji Steel Re-Rolling Mills and referring to other Tribunal judgments. The Tribunal, after considering the submissions from both sides, observed that the hearing notice was not sent to the Advocate on record nor the applicant, resulting in an ex-parte order. The Tribunal acknowledged the importance of not dismissing appeals for non-prosecution as per the Balaji Steel Re-Rolling Mills case but emphasized that appeals must be disposed of on merit. The Tribunal concluded that in cases where an ex-parte order was passed due to non-delivery of notices, the judgment in Balaji Steel Re-Rolling Mills could not be applied universally. Therefore, based on the evidence that notice could not be served to the applicant and Advocate, the Tribunal decided to recall the ex-parte order and restored the appeal to its original number. The Tribunal allowed the ROA application, and the appeal was scheduled to proceed in due course.
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