Natural Justice
5 articles
A Reply Handed Over at the Hearing Must Be Read: Orissa High Court Sets Aside Section 74 Order That Treated a Manually Filed Reply as No Reply
A Division Bench of the Orissa High Court has quashed a Section 74 order for 2019-20 that proceeded as if no reply existed, although the Superintendent had signed an acknowledgment of the contractor's written reply. The Court held that Rule 142(4) of the CGST Rules does not make electronic filing a condition of being heard, remitted the matter, and left the limitation and jurisdiction questions open.
13 min read629 Noticees, One Order: Delhi High Court Declines a GST Writ Challenge, Distinguishing ASP Traders on Natural Justice
When a single Order-in-Original runs to 1,881 pages and names 629 firms and individuals in an alleged fake-invoicing racket, does an individual noticee's claim that its reply was never considered open the door to a writ petition? The Delhi High Court says no — and distinguishes the Supreme Court's ASP Traders on the ground that a mass adjudication order is not the same as an unreasoned order against a single assessee.
14 min readA 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 readFreeze Before Order, Hearing Before Extension: Patna High Court Reads GST Attachment Jurisprudence Into Section 110(5) of the Customs Act
A division bench of the Patna High Court quashed provisional attachments of a digital-marketing company's bank accounts where the department could not show a written, Commissioner-approved order preceding the freeze, and set aside extension orders passed without any hearing before the six-month period expired. Treating Section 110(5) of the Customs Act and Section 83 of the GST Act as in pari materia, the Court imported the Supreme Court's Radha Krishan Industries construction of the GST provision wholesale into the customs context, while also rebuking the department for attempting to cure the defect through a fresh order passed while the writ petition was pending.
14 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 read