The Delhi High Court has cautioned the GST officers against the adoption of the same template for demand order.
The bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh and Justice Amit Sharma have observed that the Assistant Commissioner has clearly adopted a template where the only reason assigned is that the reply filed was “not comprehensible, conceivable, not perspicuous and is ambiguous”. It clearly exhibits an abject non-application of mind and the officer repeatedly employing identical phraseology to deal with such matters.
The petitioner/assessee has challenged the order by which the reply to the show-cause has been completely discarded by the proper officer, Assistant Commissioner, DGST without any reasons.
The petition arose out of a show-cause notice in which it was alleged that proper declaration of output tax was not made by the Petitioner. The Petitioner had filed a reply to the show-cause notice. The Petitioner again received reminder notices to which reply was again communicated by him. The order has been passed by the Assistant Commissioner.
The order states that after giving the background in two main paragraphs, the order merely records, “….The explanation given in the reply is not comprehensible, conceivable, not perspicuous and is ambiguous…..”
The court while quashing the order held that almost identical language used in the orders has not been approved by the Court.
Case Details
Case Title: Chetak Logistics Ltd Versus UOI
Case No.: W.P.(C) 17270/2024 & CM APPLs.73478/2024, 73479/2024
Date: 13/12/2024
Counsel For Petitioner: V. Lakshmikumaran, Mr. L. Badri Narayanan, Mr. Charanya Lakshmikumaran, Mr. Yogendra Aldak, Mr. Kunal Kapoor
Counsel For Respondent: Sushil Kumar Pandey
