Delhi High Court Pulls Up GST Authority For Issuing Personal Hearing Notice Saying Assessee's Attendance Not Needed
The Delhi High Court recently criticised the GST Authorities for issuing a “strange” personal hearing notice to an assessee, which said that the assessee need not attend the hearing as the notice is issued only for the purpose of uploading final order.“The personal hearing notice is also quite strange to say the least that no personal hearing was granted before the Commissioner Appeals...
The Delhi High Court recently criticised the GST Authorities for issuing a “strange” personal hearing notice to an assessee, which said that the assessee need not attend the hearing as the notice is issued only for the purpose of uploading final order.
“The personal hearing notice is also quite strange to say the least that no personal hearing was granted before the Commissioner Appeals but a hearing was fixed for uploading of the order. Such a practice is inexplicable and deserves to be re-looked at as no useful purpose is served by giving a personal hearing for the purpose of uploading an order,” a division bench of Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Renu Bhatnagar said.
The Petitioner had approached the Court against GST demand of ₹3.36 crore.
Briefly put, a Show Cause Notice was issued to the Petitioner under Section 73 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act in which additional tax demands and demands relating to ineligible ITC were raised.
The grievance of the Petitioner was that the time given to file the reply was only 5 days and thereafter, the impugned order-in-original was passed within a period of one week.
An appeal was preferred by the Petitioner in which the GST Appellate Authority issued a notice to the Petitioner for personal hearing on the very next day. But, the order-in-appeal had already been passed, even before issuance of notice for personal hearing.
The notice was issued on April 29, 2024 whereas the order-in-appeal was passed on April 16, 2024.
The High Court observed that “on both the occasions i.e., in the impugned OIO as also in the impugned OIA, sufficient opportunity for personal hearing has not been granted to the Petitioner.”
As such, it set aside the impugned orders and directed the GST authority to issue a fresh notice to the Petitioner.
Appearance: Mr. Satendra Kumar and Mr. Pragyanshu Pandey, Advs. for Petitioner; Mr. Shashank Sharma, SSC with Ms. Malika Kumari, Adv. for R-3.
Case title: MS Jamil Trading Co Thrg Proprietor Mr Jamil Ahmed v. Union Of India Thrg The Secretary Ministry Of Finance & Ors.
Case no.: W.P.(C) 10513/2025