A division bench of the Gujarat High Court comprising Justice Nisha Thakore and Justice J. B. Pardiwala has asked the Government to take care of the technical glitches in the GSTN at the earliest and slammed the Government that the High Court is flooded with the litigations due to such glitches.
The writ applicant belatedly filed his returns taking a plea of lack of knowledge about the consequences of non-filing .They had availed the benefit of the amnesty scheme dated 28.05.2021 by making the requisite payment of an amount of Rs. 24,000/-.
The issue raised before the bench was that whether the show cause notice seeking cancellation of registration and the consequential impugned order cancelling registration under the GST Act, 2017 is valid and sustainable in eye of law?
Justice Nisha Thakore was of the view that the scheme of Act, prescribes specific forms at each stage right from registration, cancellation and revocation of cancellation of registration and the same are to be strictly adhered too. At the same time, it is equally important that the Proper Officer empowered under the said Act adheres to the principles of natural justice, the Court said.
Emphasizing the need of an appropriate software, Justice observed that “until the Department is able to develop and upload an appropriate software in the portal which would enable the Department to feed all the necessary information and material particulars in the show cause notice as well as in the final order of cancellation of registration that may be passed, the authority concerned shall issue an appropriate show cause notice containing all the necessary details and information in a physical form and forward the same to the dealer by RPAD. In the same manner, when it comes to passing the final order, the same shall also be passed in a physical form containing all the necessary information and particulars and shall be forwarded to the dealer by RPAD.”
Allowing the petition on ground of violation of natural justice principles, Justice Nisha Thakore observed that “our concern is that on account of procedural lapses, the High Court should not be flooded with writ applications. The procedural aspects should be looked into by the authority concerned very scrupulously and deligently. Why unnecessarily give any dealer a chance to make a complaint before this Court when it could have been easily avoided by the department.
Concurring with the above findings, Justice J. B. Pardiwala observed that “the GSTN i.e. the Goods and Service Tax Network, is one of the most significant achievements in the history of Indian Indirect Taxation. Since July, 2017, the implementation of GST in India is due to the GSTN. However, still there are many issues which the GSTN need to address itself. There is always a scope of improvement in the functioning and technical performance of the GSTN. Due compliance of the laws of GST involves lot of technology and not just the law. Using the right technology for the right process in an efficient manner will definitely reduce the hardships and difficulties, which the small dealers may have toface. It is extremely important as on date to ensure that the technical glitches or bottlenecks in the portal are attended at the earliest and taken care off.”
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