Case Law Details
Wipro Ltd. Vs State of Gujarat (Gujarat High Court)
in the absence of any debtor – creditor relationship, the department could not have asked the bank to debit the accounts of the writ applicant – company and credit a particular amount as specified in the notices to the treasury of the State Government.
We may also observe that ordinarily, when appeals are pending before the first appellate authority or the Tribunal, as the case may be, with an application seeking stay towards recovery of the tax, then, in such circumstances, the department should not proceed to take coercive steps for the recovery of the amount incurred by the dealer under the GVAT Act. This statement of ours should not be construed as an absolute proposition of law, but, the department is expected to at least wait for the final outcome of the appeals on their own merits, more particularly, when the appeals are already admitted.
The Administrative directions for fulfilling recovery targets for the collection of revenue should not be at the expense of foreclosing the remedies which are available to assessees for challenging the correctness of a demand. The sanctity of the rule of law must be preserved. The remedies which are legitimately open in law to an assessee to challenge a demand cannot be allowed to be foreclosed by a hasty recourse to coercive powers. Assessing Officers and appellate authorities perform quasi-judicial functions under the GVAT Act, 2003.
In the result, this writ application succeeds and is hereby allowed. The impugned notices are hereby quashed and set aside. The appellate authority as well as the Tribunal is directed to take up all the appeals for hearing and dispose them off on their own merits within a period of two months from today.
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