Kerala High Court, chaired by Justice Gopinath P. awarded an interim relief to the petitioner in the absence of the Good and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT). It was ordered that it is always subjected to any remedy that the petitioner may receive from the GSTAT once it is established.
The respondent department detained the petitioner Sheetal Jain’s goods, and she filed a writ petition with the HC upon receiving an order received from the respondents under Section 130 of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST)/State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Acts, which deals with the confiscation of goods and conveyances.
The grievance of the petitioner is that the Appellate Tribunal has yet to be constituted, it is unable to exercise its right to appeal to it under Section 112 of the CGST/SGST Acts.
According to the petitioner’s counsel, the respondent department may be ordered to release the petitioner’s goods, which are now in their custody to the petitioner provisionally.
Additionally, the counsel stated that the petitioner would give enough guarantee to ensure that any interim orders to release the petitioner’s products wouldn’t have any adverse effects on the revenue.
The petitioner is not entitled to any interim relief upon submission of a bank guarantee, according to the Government Pleader (GP), since this is antithetical to the object of Section 130 of the CGST/SGST Acts.
Furthermore, it was submitted that the scheme surrounding the provisions of Section 130 of the CGST/SGST Acts is pointed out to show that a proceeding under Section 130 postulates that there was a clear attempt to evade payment of tax.
Besides that, the decisions made by the Joint Commissioner of State Tax (Appellate Authority), the second respondent, and the State Tax Officer (STO – Adjudicating authority), the first respondent, were legal and proper.
The Bench observed that since the order of adjudicating authority permits the petitioner to have the goods released on payment of a total sum of Rs.75,20,478/-, the petitioner may receive the goods in exchange for paying the sum before the State Tax Officer.
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