The Rajasthan High Court has held that a taxpayer should not be deprived of the statutory right of appeal where the delay in filing occurred due to circumstances beyond its control, particularly when the adjudication order was allegedly not effectively communicated and no opportunity of personal hearing was granted.
The Bench of Justice Arun Monga and Justice Bhuwan Goyal has condoned the delay in filing the GST appeal and directed the Appellate Authority to entertain and decide the appeal on merits.
The dispute arose from an Order-in-Original dated December 26, 2025, whereby the Deputy Commissioner, State Tax, Circle-B, Bhiwadi, raised a GST demand of ₹75.38 lakh for the financial year 2021-22. The demand was based on allegations relating to excess availment of Input Tax Credit (ITC); non-payment of tax under the Reverse Charge Mechanism (RCM); and differences detected during scrutiny of GST returns.
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According to the petitioner, it could not file the statutory appeal within the prescribed limitation period because the adjudication order was never effectively communicated. The petitioner contended that the order had merely been uploaded on the GST portal and that, having already filed a detailed reply without being granted a personal hearing, it genuinely believed that no final order had yet been passed. The company claimed it became aware of the order only later, by which time the GST portal no longer permitted filing of the appeal as it had become time-barred.
The petitioner further argued that the delay was entirely bona fide and attributable to the authorities’ failure to effectively communicate the adjudication order and to provide the mandatory opportunity of personal hearing under Section 75(4) of the CGST/RGST Act, 2017.
It was submitted that immediately upon acquiring knowledge of the order, the petitioner took prompt steps to challenge it, but the statutory appellate mechanism had already become unavailable due to expiry of the limitation period reflected on the GST portal.
Before the Court, the petitioner relied upon a series of earlier Division Bench judgments of the Rajasthan High Court, including M/s M R Traders, Molana Construction Company, Man Singh Tanwar, and RPC PSIPL JV, where similar relief had been granted by directing delayed GST appeals to be heard on merits after condoning delay in exceptional circumstances.
The State opposed the writ petition, contending that the adjudication order had been validly passed and that the appeal was clearly barred by the statutory limitation prescribed under Section 107 of the GST Act.
The Division Bench observed that although the Appellate Authority is bound by the limitation provisions contained in Section 107 of the CGST/RGST Act, the peculiar facts of the case demonstrated that the petitioner had been prevented from filing the appeal for reasons beyond its control.
The Court held that refusing to examine the appeal on merits in such circumstances would result in grave prejudice to the taxpayer.
Noting that the Rajasthan High Court had consistently adopted the same approach in several earlier judgments, the Bench found no reason to depart from that settled position and considered it appropriate to extend similar relief in the present case.
Allowing the writ petition, the Rajasthan High Court condoned the delay in filing the GST appeal and directed the Appellate Authority to entertain the appeal and adjudicate it on merits.
The Court clarified that the benefit would be available provided the petitioner files the appeal within 30 days from the date of uploading of the High Court’s order on the Court’s website.
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