Directorate of Legal Affairs

Directorate of Legal Affairs performs the following duties on behalf of the CBEC (now CBIC):

(a) To function as the nodal agency to monitor the legal and judicial work of the Board;

(b) To create a data bank of all the cases decided by the various benches of the Tribunal and monitor cases effectively in order to ensure that the field formations recommend filing of appeals only in deserving cases and not on the issues already decided by the Supreme Court or High Courts and accepted by the department;

(c) To ensure that all orders of the Tribunal are examined by the field formations and timely proposal for filing appeal are sent to the Board wherever necessary and the report about acceptance of an order is sent to the Chief Commissioner;

(d) To intimate the field formations about important decisions of the various High Courts, which are finally accepted by the Department, and about the important decisions of the Supreme Court so that unnecessary litigation work on the issues already settled is not created by the field formations;

(e) To create a database pertaining to the cases pending in various High Courts. The appellant/respondent Commissioners will assist the Directorate in creating and updating the database pertaining to the High Court cases;

(f) To prepare panels of Standing Counsels/panel counsels for various High Courts on the basis of feedback received from the field formations. However, the role of the Directorate is restricted to making recommendations only and the final decision regarding approval of the panel/appointment of the Standing Counsels rests with the Ministry;

(g) To keep an approved panel of eminent lawyers well-versed with Customs and Central Excise laws as well as administration, which may not be on the regular panel of the government but may be engaged by the department for handling important cases; and

(h) Directorate of Legal Affairs has been monitoring the departmental cases pending before Hon'ble Supreme Court and Delhi High Court.

Performance of DLA

Following Table indicates the number of cases handled by the Directorate:

Year	Total Number of cases	Departmental cases		Party's Appeals
Year	Total Number of cases	Number of cases decided	% Success Rate	Number of cases decided	% Success Rate (for Party)
2004-05	465	264	12.12	201	20.90
2005-06	353	161	4.97	192	9.38
2006-07	593	333	5.41	260	23.85
2007-08	666	411	6.81	255	17.25
2008-09	679	479	9.81	200	9.50

Based on cadre review proposals 2010.