The Allahabad High Court while revoking the cancellation of registration, criticised callous attitude of dept. in exercisingquasi-adjudicatory functions.
The petitioner, M/S Ansari Construction was served show cause notice by the respondent authority proposing to cancel the registration certificate of the petitioner mainly on the ground that the petitioner has failed to file the return for a continuous period of six months.
In pursuance of the said notice, an ex-parte order was passed cancelling the registration of the petitioner by invoking the powers under Section 29(2)(5) of Uttar Pradesh Goods and Services Tax, 2017.
The petitioner filed an application under Section 13 of U.P. GST Act 2017 for revocation of cancellation of registration on the ground that the petitioner had submitted all the pending returns under GSTR-3B and GSTR-1 and, thus, the entire tax liability stood clear with the late fees.
The single-judge bench of Justice Pankaj Bhatia observed that along with the application, the petitioner had filed a statement to the effect that all the requisite returns have been filed and the dues are cleared and thus it was incumbent upon the Department to have verified the correctness of averments made in the application.
“I am sorry to observe that the Department miserably failed to verify the facts from their own records and proceeded to issue a show-cause notice which is contained in Annexure 4 to the writ petition and quoted herein above. The manner in which the show cause notice has been issued is wholly unacceptable as it does not record any shortcoming on the part of the assessee. It is not conceivable as to what was required in the show cause notice,” the court said.
Therefore, the court held that serious quasi-adjudicatory functionaries are being discharged by persons who do not have a legally trained mind and are entrusted in discharging functions affecting huge revenues.
The court noted that the order passed by the Assistant Commissioner rejecting the application of the petitioner is wholly arbitrary and demonstrates the lack of legally trained mind as there appears to be no effort to verify the correctness of the assertions made by the petitioner at the end of the Department.
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