Bombay High Court
7 articles
A Right of Way Is Not a Right to Exclude: Bombay High Court on Gated Access Over Government Land
Forty-five years of maintaining a gate at the entrance to a government access road did not give a Mumbai housing society the right to keep it there. The Bombay High Court's order separates a permissive right of way from an allotment of land, and shows why a pending adverse possession suit over one plot does not shield unrelated encroachments on another.
13 min readOne Tax Period, One Notice: Bombay High Court's Nagpur Bench Reaffirms That a Section 74 GST Notice Cannot Club Multiple Financial Years, Pending a Larger Bench Reference
A show cause notice covering financial years 2019-20 to 2021-22, alleging suppression of taxable value, was quashed because the CGST Act ties assessment and its five-year limitation to each financial year separately. The Bombay High Court held itself bound by its own precedent over a contrary Delhi High Court view — even after the Supreme Court declined to interfere with that view — but preserved the Revenue's liberty to revive the case if a pending Larger Bench reference goes the other way.
13 min readBombay High Court: A 'Caretaker Agreement' Calling Itself a Tenancy Is Still a Licence
Ending a three-decade dispute over a Vashi APMC market shop, the Bombay High Court has reaffirmed that the decisive test for a lease is transfer of the right to enjoy property with exclusive possession — not the presence of the word 'rent' or even a literal but internally inconsistent recital of tenancy.
13 min readNo Hearing, No Time to Pay: Bombay High Court Quashes a Section 74A GST Order and Fixes Personal Cost on the Officer Who Passed It
A GST demand order recited that personal hearing was 'not applicable' and was signed off while the taxpayer's sixty-day window to pay up and avoid penalty was still open. The Bombay High Court quashed it on both grounds, held the alternate remedy of a statutory appeal no bar, and ordered the department to recover its Rs. 50,000 cost from the officer who passed the order.
14 min readConsistency Is Sacrosanct in Revenue Matters: Bombay High Court Bars a Rs. 21.92 Crore Service Tax Demand the Department Had Already Dropped Against an Identically Placed Assessee
A show cause notice issued roughly two years after the transactions it targeted, confirming Rs. 21.92 crore in service tax, interest and penalty on a brewery's contract-bottling arrangement with its brand owner. The Bombay High Court's Aurangabad Bench dismissed the Revenue's appeal against the Tribunal's finding that the demand was time-barred, holding that the extended period of limitation cannot be invoked without a specific averment of fraud or suppression in the show cause notice, and that the Department could not press an appeal against one assessee after having accepted an identical Tribunal order in favour of another.
14 min readPurchased Together, Divided in Court: What Bajoria v. Bajoria Says About Limitation in Partition Suits Between Co-Owners
Two brothers who built a business together fell out over who owned what. The Bombay High Court's answer to when their clock started running is a compact lesson in how limitation actually works for co-owned property — and why a plaintiff cannot always choose to drop an inconvenient property from a partition suit.
13 min readRedevelopment by Majority: Sattva New Heights v. Patankar on When a Minority Member Can Enjoin a Housing Society
Two members out of three hundred got an injunction that stopped an entire redevelopment project. The Bombay High Court took it apart, ground by ground — and along the way set out how courts should treat SPV bidders, shifting environmental classifications and project management consultants in society redevelopment disputes.
16 min read