Calcutta High Court
6 articles
Seven Days Means Seven Days: Calcutta High Court Quashes Section 129 Penalty Orders Passed 175 Days Late on Two Detained Lorries
Two lorries hired out to a transporter were detained in July 2025 and the penalty orders came in January 2026. The Calcutta High Court held that the seven-day period for the order in Section 129(3) had run out on 24 July 2025, that nothing paused it, and that the orders were barred by limitation and without jurisdiction.
14 min readA GST Demand Raised After the Resolution Plan Is Approved: Calcutta High Court on Extinguishment of Unclaimed IGST Dues Under Section 31 of the IBC
A GST authority issued a Section 73 notice in September 2025 for 2021-22, two years after Srei Equipment Finance's resolution plan was approved. The Calcutta High Court held the dues extinguished and quashed the notice, the order-in-original and a separate interest notice.
13 min readCommon Areas, RERA, and the Arbitration Clause: Calcutta High Court Declines to Disturb Interim Protection for a Condominium's Shared Spaces
In Forum Projects Private Limited v. Gaurav Karnani, the Calcutta High Court upheld an arbitral tribunal's order appointing a surveyor and restraining a developer from altering the common areas of a Kolkata condominium, holding that protective interim measures under Section 17 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act do not require the tribunal to first decide a pending objection to arbitrability, and declining itself to rule on whether RERA ousts arbitration over common-area disputes.
13 min readVoidable, Not Void: Calcutta High Court Shields an Innocent DFIA Licence Transferee from a Decade-Old Customs Demand
Comet Overseas bought a genuine, validly transferable duty-free import licence for value, through proper banking channels, years before the original licence-holder's export obligation was found to rest on falsely declared goods. The Calcutta High Court held the licence remained voidable, not void, and that an unimpeached bona fide transferee cannot be made to answer in customs duty, interest and redemption fine for a fraud committed further up the chain.
13 min readDepartmental Knowledge Defeats the Extended Period: Calcutta High Court Quashes a Central Excise Demand Founded on the Assessee's Own Cost Audit Report
Hindalco Industries faced a Central Excise demand of Rs. 6,29,920 built entirely on its own Cost Audit Report, three years after departmental officers had personally witnessed the very stock shortages now called suppression. The Calcutta High Court held the extended period of limitation unavailable: what the proviso to Section 11A requires is a deliberate act of concealment by the assessee, not the mere absence of departmental knowledge, and a demand cannot simultaneously rest on a statutory record and be founded on its suppression.
13 min readBona Fide Buyer, Defaulting Seller: Calcutta High Court Curbs the Mechanical Use of Section 74 to Deny GST Input Tax Credit
A logistics company claimed input tax credit on invoices from a supplier who later stopped filing returns. The department invoked Section 74's fraud-based extended period to raise a Rs. 6.3 crore demand two years after ordinary limitation had run out. The Calcutta High Court quashed the order, applying binding precedent that a buyer's credit cannot be held hostage to a seller's default, and that dressing up an ordinary demand as fraud does not extend the clock.
13 min read