The Gujarat High Court has expressed serious concern over the issuance of three personal hearing notices on the same day, digitally signed within approximately two minutes, scheduling a taxpayer’s appearance on three different dates.
The bench of Justice A.S. Supehia and Justice Vaibhavi D. Nanavati also directed the appellate authority to pass a fresh appellate order and place it before the Court at the next hearing and warned that an unsatisfactory explanation could result in exemplary costs being imposed on the erring officer.
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During the hearing, Assistant Government Pleader Raj Tanna, acting on instructions from Chetan Vimalchandra Joshi, Deputy Commissioner of State Tax (Appeals), Division 2, Ahmedabad, submitted three notices of personal hearing.
All three notices bore the date April 16, 2026, but carried different notice numbers and required the taxpayer to appear on separate dates.
The first notice was digitally signed at 4:17:49 p.m. and fixed the hearing for April 18, 2026, at 12:18 p.m.
The second notice was digitally signed at 4:18:42 p.m., fixing the hearing for April 21, 2026, at 1:17 p.m.
The third notice was digitally signed at 4:19:29 p.m., requiring the taxpayer to appear on April 24, 2026, at 12:18 p.m.
Thus, the three notices scheduling successive hearing dates were digitally signed within one minute and forty seconds.
The Bench expressed strong disapproval of the system permitting three separately numbered notices to be issued on the same date for three different personal hearings.
Describing the issue as a serious deficiency, the Court observed that such functionality could allow the authority concerned to manipulate the system by generating multiple hearing notices in rapid succession.
The central procedural concern was the portal’s ability to generate notices for successive hearing dates together, rather than the dates being scheduled through separate actions over time. The order places the functioning of that process under judicial scrutiny.
The Court directed the Chief Commissioner of State Tax, as the highest authority, to file a report addressing the functioning of the portal and the process that allowed the competent officer to generate the three notices on the same day.
The report must be submitted by the next hearing. The Bench warned that failure to comply would constrain it to pass strictures against the authorities concerned.
The Court also directed the Registry to communicate the order to all three respondents.
Alongside seeking an explanation about the portal, the Bench directed the appellate authority to pass a fresh appellate order and place it before the Court on the next hearing date.
The short order does not set out the underlying tax dispute, the amount involved or the detailed contents of the earlier appellate decision. Its operative directions focus on the hearing notices, the portal’s functioning and the requirement for a fresh appellate order.
The Bench clarified that if the explanation was found unsatisfactory, exemplary costs would be imposed on the erring officer.
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