The Bombay high Court has directed the department to restore the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Registration which was canceled for non-filing of GST Returns, without affording an opportunity of hearing to the petitioner.
According to the petitioner, the GST Superintendent issued an order on April 17, 2023, canceling the petitioner’s GST registration under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. The ground for cancellation of the registration was the alleged failure to file GSTR-3B returns for over six months. Following this, on April 20, 2023, the petitioner submitted an application for the revocation of the cancellation.
However, a show cause notice was issued on May 19, 2023, questioning the reasons behind the revocation application. The petitioner claims that, without proper opportunity to explain, an order dated May 31, 2023, was passed by Respondent No.3, rejecting the revocation application.
Subsequently, the petitioner filed an appeal on May 31, 2023, emphasizing unavoidable circumstances leading to delayed GST returns. Despite these claims, the appeal was rejected by an order dated September 14, 2023.
In response, Sham Walve, for the petitioner argued that it had now complied with payments and filed GST returns up to March 2023. He requested the restoration of the GST registration, asserting that any delays were a result of the Department’s actions.
The petitioner counsel also submitted that, if the GST registration of the Petitioner is restored, the Petitioner, within a period of four weeks from the date of restoration of the GST registration, would file all the returns up to date and clear all the dues. He added that, in the light of the same, the Petitioner’s GST registration ought to be restored.
Megha Bajoria, the Counsel appearing on behalf of the Respondents, submitted that, in the event this Court was inclined to restore the GST registration of the Petitioner, this Court ought to direct the Petitioner to file all the pending returns and make all the GST payments within a fixed period of time so as to cause no prejudice to the Revenue.
It was observed by the Division Bench of Justice G S Kulkarni and Justice Firdosh P Poonawalla that, “as now the Petitioner has regularized the returns upto March 2023 and is also willing to regularize the future returns within four weeks from the date the registration is restored, the Petitioner needs to be granted such an opportunity to undertake filing of the returns for the future period after March 2023.”
It was thus held that, “The Respondents are directed to restore the GST registration of the Petitioner within a period of one week from the date of uploading of this Order.”
It was also added that, “The Petitioner is hereby ordered and directed to file all the GST returns and make all the GST payments within a period of four weeks from the date of restoration of the Petitioner’s GST registration.”
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