Delhi HC grants Petitioner 2 Months’ Time to File Reply to Non-speaking, Cryptic GST Adjudicatory Order [Read Order]

In a recent judgment, the Delhi High Court granted a petitioner two months’ time to file a reply to a Goods and Services Tax (GST) adjudication order that the Court observed was non-speaking and cryptic in nature.

The petitioner, Superb Galaxy through its proprietor Sarjivan Kumar Garg filed a writ petition, challenging the adjudication order dated August 24, 2024, issued by the Sales Tax Officer Class II/ AVATO which arose from a Show Cause Notice (SCN) dated May 28, 2024.

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The latter part of the petition questioned the vires of various central and state notifications issued under Section 168A of the CGST Act, namely, Notification No. 56/2023- Central Tax dated 28th December, 2023 and Notification No. 9/2023- Central Tax dated 31st March, 2023 as also the Notification No. 56/2023-State Tax dated 11th July, 2024 and Notification No. 9/2023- State Tax dated 22nd June, 2023.

The Petitioner, represented by Ujjwal Jain, submitted that the impugned order had been passed without affording the petitioner a fair opportunity to reply to the SCN or participate in the adjudication proceedings. It was contended that the order was nonspeaking, cryptic and indicative of a complete breach of the principles of natural justice.

The respondents were represented by Sumit K. Batra, Ashish Goyal, along with Anurag Singhal and Vaishali Gupta.

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The Division Bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh and Justice Rajneesh Kumar Gupta, upon reviewing the record observed that no reply had been filed by the petitioner in response to the SCN and no personal hearing had been granted.

The impugned order merely recorded that ‘no reply was received and no one appeared for the hearing’, thereby concluding that the petitioner had “nothing to say in the matter.”

The Delhi High Court termed the order to be cryptic and unsatisfactory, and noted that it lacked specific reasons and failed to provide the petitioner with an opportunity to contest the matter on its merits.

Consequently, the impugned order was set aside and the petitioner was granted time until 10th July 2025, to file the reply to SCN, following which the adjudicating authority would conduct personal hearing prior to passing an order.

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The Court left open the broader challenge to the validity of the impugned notifications, making it subject to the outcome of pending proceedings before the Supreme Court in S.L.P. No. 4240/2025 (M/s HCC-SEW-MEIL-AAG JV v. Assistant Commissioner of State Tax & Ors.) and a related matter in the Delhi High Court in W.P.(C) 9214/2024 (Engineers India Limited v. Union of India & Ors.)

To Read the full text of the Order CLICK HERE

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