Summary: An assessee may discover an adjudication order months after it was uploaded on the GST portal, by which time the period for filing an appeal may have expired. The supplied article examines Section 169 of the CGST Act, 2017 and the Allahabad High Court’s decision in Bambino Agro Industries Ltd. v. State of Uttar Pradesh, concerning whether uploading an order on the Common Portal or sending an e-mail alert is sufficient to constitute service and trigger limitation. Section 169(1) provides six modes of service: direct tender or messenger, registered or speed post with acknowledgement due, e-mail, making the communication available on the Common Portal, newspaper publication and affixation in specified circumstances. The article focuses on the deeming provisions in Section 169(2) and (3), observing that they expressly refer to tendering, publication, affixation and registered or speed post, but do not mention e-mail or Common Portal upload. It presents a comparative table showing which modes are covered by the deeming fiction. The article states that the Allahabad High Court held that the deeming fiction applies to tender, speed post, publication and affixation, but not to e-mail or portal upload, and attributes significance to the absence of a verifiable record showing when an assessee accessed an order. The conclusion states that portal upload and e-mail alert complete dispatch but, according to the supplied article, do not complete service, and that limitation under Section 107 runs from the date the assessee actually comes to know of the order.
What Section 169 Actually Says
An assessee receives an adjudication order passed months ago. The time to file an appeal has long expired. He had no idea the order even existed.
No physical notice. No registered post. Just an upload on the portal and an e-mail alert he may or may not have seen.
Sounds familiar? The Allahabad High Court, in Bambino Agro Industries Ltd. v. State of Uttar Pradesh [2025] 181 taxmann.com 888, was flooded with over 2,300 such cases and all arising from the same root cause: orders served only through electronic mode, taxpayers unaware, and limitation already expired by the time they found out. The Court did not just decide those cases, it answered a question that has been bothering practitioners since 2017.
Section 169(1) provides six modes of serving any notice or order: (a) Direct tender or messenger; (b) Registered post or speed post with acknowledgement due; (c) E-mail adderess; (d) Making it available on the Common Portal; (e) Publication in a newspaper; and (f) Affixation if and only when none of the above is practicable.
And so far, the Revenue has been treating clauses (c) and (d) as the default i.e. Upload on the portal and send an e-mail alert, but Section 169 does not end at Sub-section (1).
The Gap Nobody Talked about
Sub-section (2) says a notice or order shall be deemed to have been served on the date it is “tendered or published or affixed.” Sub-section (3) says when sent by registered post or speed post, it shall be deemed received after the normal transit period.
Two sub-sections. Six modes. But the deeming fiction does not cover all six equally, here is exactly where each mode stands:
| Mode of Service | Clause as per sub-section (1) | Does Deemed Service Apply? | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct tender or messenger | (a) | Yes | Word “tendered” used in sub-section (2) |
| Registered post or Speed post | (b) | Yes | Sub-section (3) specifically covers it |
| (c) | No | Neither sub-section (2) nor (3) of Section 169 mentions it | |
| Common Portal upload | (d) | No | Neither sub-section (2) nor (3) of Section 169 mentions it |
| Newspaper publication | (e) | Yes | Word “published” used in sub-section (2) |
| Affixation at place of business | (f) | Yes | Word “affixed” used in sub-section (2) |
Clauses (c) and (d), namely service by e-mail and through the Common Portal, find no mention in Sub-sections (2) or (3) of Section 169. This is not a drafting error. The legislature deliberately omitted them.
The Bambino Agro Judgment — Reading Section 169 as It Should Have Been Read
The Court held that deeming fiction under Sub-sections (2) and (3) of Section 169 covers only tender, speed post, publication and affixation, not e-mail and portal upload. The legislature omitted clauses (c) and (d) deliberately. Even courier was excluded from Sub-section (3) while speed post was included which proves that every word was a conscious choice.
The reason is not far to seek as speed post, physical tender, newspaper publication and affixation each carry a built-in mechanism to verify receipt i.e. an acknowledgement, a postal record, or a public act of notice. And E-mail and common portal upload carry no such assurance.
The common portal maintains no log of when a taxpayer accesses an order. Further, the e-mail alerts dispatched by Revenue did not even carry the actual order, only an intimation that something had been uploaded on the portal. Without acknowledgement, receipt simply cannot be presumed.
Conclusion
Uploading an order on the Common Portal or sending an e-mail alert merely completes Revenue’s act of dispatch. It does not complete service on the assessee. The two are not the same, and the law does not treat them as such. Service is complete only when the contents of the order actually come to the knowledge of the assessee, either through actual communication or through a mode that carries with it a verifiable proof of receipt. Since portal upload and e-mail carry no such proof, and since GSTN itself has admitted that no log exists of when a taxpayer accessed an order, the period of limitation under Section 107 does not begin to run from the date of upload. It runs from the date the assessee actually came to know of the order. That is what Section 169 read with Bambino Agro now firmly establishes. And that is the protection every assessee is entitled to claim.
Author: Kartik Nawal | CMA and MBA (Finance)
