The Uttarakhand High Court has quashed a GST adjudication order and the consequential appellate order after finding that the department had served the show cause notice solely through the GST portal despite the taxpayer’s registration having already been cancelled.

The Bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay held that once a taxpayer’s GST registration stands cancelled, the department cannot presume that the taxpayer will continue to monitor the GST portal for communications. 

The bench ruled that service of notice exclusively through the portal in such circumstances does not satisfy the statutory requirements relating to valid service of notices. 

The petitioner/assessee challenged an adjudication order dated April 6, 2024 passed under Section 73(9) of the Uttarakhand GST Act, 2017, along with an appellate order dated July 11, 2025 by which the appeal was dismissed as time-barred. 

According to the petitioner, its GST registration had been cancelled on September 12, 2023 with retrospective effect from July 31, 2023. Subsequently, the tax department issued a show cause notice on December 23, 2023 and later passed the adjudication order. 

The petitioner contended that both the show cause notice and the adjudication order were uploaded only on the GST portal. Since the registration had already been cancelled, there was no reason for the petitioner to continue checking the portal regularly. Consequently, the petitioner remained unaware of the proceedings and the order passed against it. 

The petitioner relied on an earlier Uttarakhand High Court decision in Raj Shekhar Pandey v. State Tax Officer, wherein similar relief had been granted. The Court in that case had drawn support from decisions of the Allahabad High Court, including M/s Ahs Steels v. Commissioner of State Taxes and M/s Katyal Industries v. State of U.P., which dealt with the legality of portal-based service after cancellation of GST registration. 

The judgments emphasized that Section 169 of the GST law provides multiple modes of service, including personal delivery, registered post, courier, email, portal communication, affixation, and newspaper publication. The legislative framework does not treat portal-based communication as the exclusive method of service. 

The Bench noted that the Allahabad High Court had already clarified that where GST registration stands cancelled, a taxpayer cannot be expected to keep monitoring the GST portal indefinitely. Insisting upon portal-based service alone would effectively impose obligations on a non-registered person that the law does not contemplate. 

The Court reproduced the observations from the Allahabad High Court judgment that the department is duty-bound to ensure effective communication of notices and cannot mechanically rely upon portal uploads when circumstances require alternative methods of service. 

The Bench further noted that the Revenue itself did not dispute that the show cause notice had been served only through the GST portal and by no other method. 

The Court concluded that the case was squarely covered by the earlier precedents dealing with cancelled GST registrations and portal-only service of notices. The Bench held that the department had failed to ensure valid service in accordance with the statutory scheme. 

Accordingly, the Court quashed both the adjudication order dated April 6, 2024; and the appellate order dated July 11, 2025. 

However, the Court granted liberty to the GST department to recommence proceedings from the stage of the show cause notice. It also directed that if the petitioner seeks a personal hearing, the same must be provided in accordance with Section 75(4) of the GST Act.

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