Tikona Infinet Private Limited Vs Union of India (Bombay High Court)
Bombay High Court held that department cannot deny the benefits of accrued Input Tax Credit (ITC) on the sole ground that GST ITC 02 was filed manually and not electronically. Thus, relevant show cause notice quashed.
Facts- The Petitioner challenges the show cause notice dated 17.08.2023 as a prelude to recovering or reversing the Input Tax Credit (ITC) of Rs. 18,30,58,995/-on the sole ground that the necessary GST IT 02 form was not filed by its transferor electronically but only manually thereby allegedly breaching the provisions of Section 18(3) of the CGST Act read with Rule 41 of the CGST Rules. The petitioner contends that such notice is wholly without jurisdiction, arbitrary and void, given the admitted impossibility of filing such form electronically due to serious functionality issues plaguing the department’s portal.
Conclusion- Held that the technicalities, mainly when not the party but the department creates them, should not be put forth by the department to defeat the statutory rights and entitlement of the parties.
Held that we quash and set aside the impugned show cause notice dated 17 August 2023 and direct the Respondents to consider, according to law, the manually filed forms by the TDN as expeditiously as possible. If, upon due consideration of the same, the Respondents still find that the ITC of Rs.18,30,58,995/- was not due or was wrongly availed of and utilised by the Petitioner, the concerned Respondent is free to make an appropriate order in that regard. However, it will not be open to the concerned Respondent to deny the benefits of accrued ITC to the Petitioner only because the prescribed forms were not filed electronically but were filed manually.
