Facts of the Case

M/S. Shobha Bharat Gas challenged an order dated 18 December 2023 passed under Section 73(9) of the U.P. GST Act, 2017 for the tax period July 2017 to March 2018. The petitioner's counsel discovered the order's existence only on 21 May 2025 — nearly seventeen months later — when he personally visited the tax office to inquire about registration of the petitioner's email address, and was informed an order had already been passed. The order never appeared under the 'view notices and orders' tab of the GST portal against the petitioner's account, and the petitioner accordingly could not file a statutory appeal within the limitation period, relying on the Court's earlier ruling in M/s Mohini Traders v. State of U.P. (2023).

Issues Involved

  1. Whether a GST demand order that never reflects under the taxpayer's 'view notices and orders' tab on the GST portal can be treated as validly served, and what consequence follows for the limitation period.
  2. Whether relief should be moulded differently where the entire disputed amount is already lying in deposit with the government, leaving no outstanding demand at stake.

Petitioner's Arguments

  • The impugned order was never visible under the 'view notices and orders' tab on the petitioner's GST portal account, so the petitioner had no way of knowing about it or of filing a timely statutory appeal, and this exact scenario was already covered by the Court's ruling in Mohini Traders.

Respondent's Arguments

  • The assessing officer was not to blame for the portal glitch, since the department's own web interface gave the officer no option or choice to control which tab a taxpayer would see an uploaded order under; if there was indeed a defect, it lay with GSTN, the separate entity that designs and runs the common portal, and not with the assessing authority.

Court Order / Findings

  • The Court accepted that the petitioner was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, finding no material to reject the claim that the order never appeared under the correct portal tab, and noting that the entire disputed amount was already lying in deposit with the State Government, so there was no outstanding demand at stake.
  • It held that no useful purpose would be served by keeping the petition pending, calling for a counter-affidavit, or relegating the petitioner to the statutory appellate remedy given this admitted service defect.
  • It disposed of the writ petition with a direction that the assessee treat the impugned order as the final notice and submit a written reply within two weeks, following which the assessing officer would issue a fresh notice with at least fifteen days' clear notice, hear the petitioner (who undertook to appear), and pass a reasoned, speaking order within a further month.

Important Clarification

  • Even where a GST demand order has technically been uploaded on the portal, if it never appears under the taxpayer's 'view notices and orders' tab, the taxpayer is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on non-service, particularly where corroborated by the department's own admission that its interface offers assessing officers no control over tab placement.
  • In such cases the High Court's preferred remedy is not to quash the order outright but to convert it into a fresh notice, triggering a compressed but proper show cause cycle (reply, then a fresh notice with clear 15 days, then a reasoned order within a month) — an efficient way to cure the service defect without wasting the substantive assessment work already done, especially where the disputed sum is already secured in government deposit.

Sections Involved

  • Section 73, U.P. GST Act, 2017 – determination of tax not involving fraud, sub-section (9) covering the final order stage.
  • GST Common Portal / GSTN – the technical infrastructure responsible for uploading and displaying notices and orders to taxpayers, whose display defects were at the heart of the dispute.

Decision – In Favour of

The decision is in favour of the assessee, with the disputed order converted into a fresh notice and a proper, time-bound show cause process directed in its place.

Case Details

Court: High Court of Judicature at Allahabad. Case No.: Writ Tax No. 2877 of 2025. Coram: Hon'ble Shekhar B. Saraf, J. and Hon'ble Praveen Kumar Giri, J. Date of Order: 10 July 2025.

Link to Download the Order

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