D. Bhuvaneswara Reddy Vs Assistant Commissioner (Andhra Pradesh High Court)
The writ petition concerned the validity of a GST assessment order issued in Form GST DRC-07 dated 30.08.2024 for the assessment year 2019–20. At the outset, the petitioner withdrew the challenge to the extension of time granted under Section 168-A of the GST Act, with liberty to raise that issue at a later stage, which liberty was granted by the Court. The challenge in the present petition was confined to the assessment order itself.
The petitioner contended, inter alia, that the impugned assessment order did not bear the signature of the assessing officer. This factual position was conceded by the learned Government Pleader for Commercial Tax on instructions. The Court noted that the legal effect of an unsigned assessment order had already been examined by earlier Division Bench judgments of the same Court. In those decisions, it had been held that the signature of the assessing officer on an assessment order is mandatory and cannot be dispensed with, and that such a defect cannot be cured by invoking statutory provisions. Consistently, subsequent Division Bench rulings had set aside assessment orders solely on the ground that they lacked the assessing officer’s signature, holding such orders to be invalid.
