S.K. Bhatnagar, Member (T)

1. These are departmental appeals filed against the orders of Collector of Central Excise, New Delhi.

2. As common issues are involved, all the five appeals were heard together for the sake of convenience.

3. The learned DR submitted that the basic legal issue involved in all these cases is whether in case of inputs which have been wholly exempted from duty albeit conditionally the benefit of modvat scheme was available to the respondents.

4. It was his submission that being wholly exempt from duty under various exemption notifications such as Notification Nos. 208/83, 152/86 and 178/84 they become clearly recognisable as being non duty paid, and in fact no duty is paid by the manufacturers on these goods at the time of their clearance from the factories. Hence the onus 1 gets shifted to the assessees, desirous of claiming modvat credit, to prove that excise duty had in fact been paid on these inputs.

5. As such, a proof of payment of duty was required to be adduced to avail the benefit of the provisions regarding deemed credit.

6. In all these cases duty paying documents were not produced, and in view of their exempted character the fact that they must ha