The Karnataka Appellate Authority of Advance Ruling (AAAR), dismissed the appeal filed by the appellant on grounds of time limitation.
The Appellant is a Government Department (Karnataka Forest Department) and under its sovereign functions, raises “plants” of tree species. plants them in forest, waste, and common lands. Over time, with the nurturing and management of the Department, these plants grow up to become trees when they are harvested to yield timber, poles, billets, firewood, pulpwood, etc which are the raw material for carpentry, fuel and fiber industries.
The task of harvesting these trees which grew from plants planted by the Department is given to Government Corporations. The Corporations fell the trees, convert them into timber, firewood, poles, etc so that they become marketable for the primary market, load and transport the marketable timber, firewood, etc by vehicles, unload and stack the marketable timber, firewood, etc in government timber depots. All these operations done by the Corporation is termed as “logging” for which charges are paid by the Appellant to the Corporations.
The Appellant submitted an application seeking advance ruling on the various issues.
The Appellate Authority consisting of members D.P. Nagendra Kumar and M.S. Srikar said that this Appellate Authority being a creature of the statue is empowered to condone a delay of only a period of 30 days after the expiry of the initial period for filing appeal.
The Appellate Authority noted that as far as the language of Section 100 of the CGST Act is concerned, the crucial words are ‘not exceeding thirty days’ used in the proviso to sub-section (2). To hold that this Appellate Authority could entertain this appeal beyond the extended period under the proviso would render the phrase ‘not exceeding thirty days’ wholly otiose.
“No principle of interpretation would justify such a result. Therefore, we hold that we are not empowered to condone the delay of one day in filing this appeal,” the Appellate Authority said.
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