Delay of 18 months in filing appeal without reasonable justifications: Madhya Pradesh HC

The Madhya Pradesh High Court bench of Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Maninder S. Bhatti has upheld the cancellation of GST registration as there was a delay of 18 months in filing the appeal without reasonable justification.

The petitioner company/assessee was registered under the Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. On account of the non-filing of a return, the GST number allotted to the petitioner was cancelled. Against cancellation, the petitioner preferred an appeal. The appeal was dismissed.

The assessee has challenged the order cancelling the GST registration.

The respondent/department submitted that the registration of the petitioner was cancelled on June 19, 2019, against which the petitioner herein preferred an appeal on January 30, 2021. The appeal was taken up on March 16, 2021. The Appellate Authority, taking into consideration provisions under Section 107 of the GST Act, dismissed the appeal as time barred.

Section 107(1) of the GST Act provides that an appeal can be preferred within a period of three (3) months from the date of the order. Section 107 (4) stipulates that the Appellate Authority, if satisfied that the appellant was prevented by sufficient cause from presenting the appeal within the period of limitation of 3 months, may allow it to be presented within a further period of one month.

The court observed that the order of cancellation of registration was passed way back on June 19, 2019 and the appeal was preferred by the petitioner on January 30, 2021. Thus, the appeal was preferred almost one and a half years after the date of the order of cancellation of registration.

The court held that the total period during which the appeal ought to have been preferred was four months from the date of cancellation of registration. However, despite a lapse of four months, the appeal was not preferred by the petitioner, and even in the memo of appeal, sufficient reasons for not filing the appeal in time were disclosed. There was an unexplained delay of one and a half years in filing the appeal.

Case Title: M/s Rajdhani Security Force Pvt. Ltd Versus UOI

Source from - https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/madhya-pradesh-high-court-goods-and-services-tax-act-gst-registration-199753