In central excise, all the
Returns, except 5% of the total filed, are marked by Aces system, for
electronic scrutiny by Range Superintendents, to be further accepted by the
Asst.Commissioners of Division.
Prior
to launch of ACES in 2009, the system of all the Returns being sent to Asst.
Commissioners was not in vogue. This major change, along with
first-in-first-out basis of scrutiny made a long queuing up of Returns in both
the screen/workflow of Asst.Commissioner and the Range Superintendent.
Even
an unimportant minor duty payable Return was held up on first-in-first-out
basis if the previous Return was not accepted by Asst. Commissioner, for want
of time or clarification or other reasons and this blocked scrutiny of all
subsequent Returns by the Range Superintendent.
Moreover,
the system permitted the assesses, inspite of warning messages at every stage
of filling up of Return, to file an erroneous Return and assesses deliberately
allowed Returns to be filed with errors under the assumption that the Range
Superintendent can correct/modify it.
Further,
the online scrutiny is not user-friendly and officers’ navigating between one
page and the other page of the Return which has six pages, is cumbersome; this
rendered the completion of scrutiny almost impossible without seeing a
print-out copy of the Return.
The
disposal time for online scrutiny of electronic Return far out-weighed the
quantum of time normally taken when it was scrutinized manually. This made the
scrutiny highly time-consuming, further aggravated by frequent disturbance of
internet connectivity and the data-jam
happening at the server-end owing to lot of transaction from active users.
Owing
to transfers of officers during annual general transfers, many trained officers
were shifted out of the assessment duty and the new officers joining in their
places required fresh training and this delayed the normal scrutiny process at
least by 3 months every year.
Comments