Deficiency In Filing Appeal Can't Make Appeal Filed Within Prescribed Period Of Limitation To Be Labelled As Time Barred: Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court has held that any deficiency in filing the appeal or application, like failure to file physical documents, cannot cause the appeal, which was registered on the online portal within the prescribed period of limitation, to be labelled and/or held to be barred by limitation.

The bench of Justice G. S. Kulkarni and Justice Firdosh P. Pooniwalla has observed that once the appeal was filed (albeit under the online method) within the prescribed limitation, any deficiency in the appeal certainly could be removed later on, as the law does not provide that the proceeding be strictly filed sans deficiency, and only then would the proceedings be held to be validly filed. The bench stated that if such a proposition were to be recognized as the correct position, it would not only tantamount to a patent absurdity but also result in a gross injustice, prejudicially affecting the legitimate rights of persons to a legal remedy (access to justice). Thus, the parties would necessarily have an opportunity to remove the deficiencies, if any, that may prevail at the time of filing the proceedings after the proceedings are filed.

The petitioner/assessee is a script writer who takes on assignments on a contract basis. The petitioner has filed goods and service tax returns under the old GST registration number as well as under the new GST registration number and also deposited tax with both returns. The petitioner, therefore, had become entitled to a refund of the amount of tax deposited by him on the cancelled (old) registration. The petitioner filed a refund application, which was rejected. The rejection was confirmed in further proceedings.

The petitioner was issued a show cause notice, to which the petitioner responded, inter alia, stating that the petitioner was bona fidely seeking a refund, as there was a mistake that had occurred in filing the returns under the cancelled registration number and depositing tax on the amount. The Assistant Commissioner rejected the refund application.

The petitioner approached the appellate authority, namely “Commissioner of Central Tax, Central Excise, and Service Tax, Raigad (Appeals)," under the provisions of Section 107 of the CGST Act. The petitioner's appeal was rejected on the ground of limitation, stating that, although the order was passed by the Assistant Commissioner on June 8, 2022, according to the appellate authority, the appeal was filed on December 28, 2022, which was barred by the provisions of Section 107(4) of the CGST Act.

The petitioner contended that although the order records that the appellant filed the appeal online on August 8, 2022, the appellate authority has not set out any reasons as to why such online filing of the appeal was not taken into consideration in deciding the issue of limitation. Although there was an error in submitting copies of some of the documents, that cannot make the filing of the appeal invalid and/or not within the limitation when, according to him, the same was filed within the prescribed limitation as prescribed by Sections 107(1) and (4) of the CGST Act.

The department contended that the portal indicates that there is no dispute about presenting the appeal online. The first registration under which the tax was deposited was cancelled, and the petitioner applied for a fresh registration, which was granted to the petitioner.

“Merely on the ground that physical copies were not furnished and/or on some deficiencies in documents to be uploaded being not complied with by the petitioner, the appellate authority, taking a hyper-technical view of the matter, rejected the petitioner's appeal without examining such essential facts and without touching the merits of the petitioner's case. Such an approach by the appellate authority was, in our opinion, not only contrary to the record and illegal but also not consistent with the provisions of Sections 107(1) and (4) of the CGST Act,” the court said.

Counsel For Petitioner: C.S.Lamba

Counsel For Respondent: Jitendra B. Mishra

Case Title: Shri Yogesh Rajendra Mehra Versus Principal Commissioner CGST & Central Excise Raigad (appeal)

Case No.: Writ Petition No. 1632 Of 2024

Click Here To Read The Order