Raj Guru Vs Assistant Commissioner (ST)(FAC) (Madras High Court)
Madras High Court held that passing of order without considering the reply and without providing any opportunity of being heard is in violation of principles of natural justice and accordingly liable to be set aside.
Facts- Petitioner, vide the present petition, submits that while filing the monthly returns for March, 2018, they had wrongly claimed Input Tax Credit under the IGST Act and the said error was rectified by reversing the said ITC in the month of April, 2018. Thereafter, the annual returns were also filed by the petitioner in Form GSTR-9 for the Assessment Year 2017-18. Without considering all these aspects, the respondent had initiated proceedings against the petitioner and they had uploaded the show cause notice under the head “Additional Notices and Orders” in the GST portal, due to which the petitioner was not aware of the same and thus, failed to file their reply to the show cause notice in time. While so, without providing any opportunity to the petitioner, the respondent passed the impugned order dated 19.09.2023.
Conclusion- Held that the respondents has neither considered the reply nor provided any opportunity of personal hearing to the petitioner prior to the passing of impugned order. Hence, this Court is of the view that the impugned order was passed in violation of principles of natural justice and it is just and necessary to provide an opportunity to the petitioner to establish their case on merits. In such view of the matter, this Court is inclined to set aside the impugned order dated 19.09.2023 passed by the respondent. Accordingly, the impugned order dated 19.09.2023 is set aside.
