CESTAT under Appeals to Appellate Tribunal :

In response to the long outstanding demand of trade and industry for establishing an independent machinery to redress the grievances of the Excise and Customs assesses, the Central Government set up the Customs, Excise and Gold Control Appellate Tribunal (CEGAT) in the year 1982 to hear and dispose of appeals in Central Excise, Customs and Gold Control matters. However, after scraping of Gold (Control) Act, 1962 and introduction of service tax by the Finance Act, 1994, a need arose to enhance the Tribunal‘s jurisdiction to include/entertain appeals of cases relating to service tax, hence; it was renamed as Central Excise Customs and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT).

The Benches of the Tribunal are composed of Judicial and Technical Members. Single member Bench has the jurisdiction to hear appeals involving an amount of duty, fine or penalty not exceeding ` 50,00,000/-.