SCN & Orders Not Containing Signature Of Proper Officer Cannot Sustain Judicial Scrutiny: Telangana High Court

The Telangana High Court stated that the show cause notices and the orders which are not pregnant with the signature of the Proper Officer cannot sustain judicial scrutiny. The Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Renuka Yara observed that “since Rule and prescribed Forms mandate requirement of signature of Proper Officer, its violation makes the notice/order vulnerable. Any contrary view taken by Court about DRC-07 having no signature without considering the above rule and prescribed Form must be held as per incuriam.” In this case, the assessee/petitioners have challenged the legality, validity and propriety of the show-cause notices and final orders which admittedly do not contain physical or digital signatures of the Proper Officer, although the impugned show-cause notices and final orders were placed on the portal. The assessee submitted that in absence of any physical or digital signature on the impugned show-cause notices and orders, the same cannot sustain judicial scrutiny. A show-cause notices/orders must contain the signature of the officer, who has issued them. In absence of any signature, the document is not authenticated. The department submitted that the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) through its advisory dated 25.09.2024 clarified that the show-cause notices and orders are generated on the common portal through the officers' login, which is accessed using the digital signature. It was further argued that these documents being computer generated upon the officers' command do not require digital signature as they can only be issued by the officers by logging into the portal with their digital signatures. Thus, neither show-cause notices nor the orders can bear a stamp of invalidity in the absence of physical or digital signatures of the officers. The bench clarified that once there exists a specific column earmarked for the signature, the said requirement becomes a statutory requirement. The bench disagreed with the department that since Sections 73/74 of the GST Act are silent about the requirement of digital/physical signature any such requirement in DRC-01 and DRC-07 can be ignored. “If strict rule of interpretation is applied in view of statutory requirement of existence of signature in the statutory Forms, it cannot be said non-existence of signature will not cause any dent to the notice/order,” stated the bench. In view of the above, the bench allowed the petition. Case Title: M/s Bigleap Technologies and Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and others v. The State of Telangana and others Case Number: WRIT PETITION No. 21101 of 2024 Counsel for Petitioner/ Assessee: Karan Talwar, M.V. J.K. Kumar, M. Uma Shankar, M. Naga Deepak Counsel for Respondent/ Department: Swaroop Oorilla, Dominic Fernandes, B. Mukherjee and C. Vishwanath Click Here To Read/Download The Order

SCN & Orders Not Containing Signature Of Proper Officer Cannot Sustain Judicial Scrutiny: Telangana High Court

Mehak Dhiman

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