Even if the Order has not been served electronically on the Portal, the Limitation Period for felling an Appeal under Section 107 of the CGST Act, 2017 will start from the date of service of the Order manually :  Gujarat HC

 

Gujarat High court recently in an appeal filed by the Britania Industries Ltd has held that the l𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝟏𝟎𝟕 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐆𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐜𝐭, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟕 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚l.

The case citation is as under:

Britannia Industries Limited

Vs.

Union of India

 

[2023] 153 taxmann.com 255 (Gujarat)

Let us have a short overview of the case:

In this case, M/s Britannia Industries Limited – the Petitioner, a Public Limited Company, is engaged in the manufacturing of food products such as biscuits, bread, rusk, etc.

The Petitioner filed an application for refund of accumulated ITC distributed by Input Service Distributor, of Rs. 37,28,087/- on 16.07.2019.
The said application for refund of accumulated ITC was rejected and order-in-original was served manually to the Petitioner. It again filed a fresh application of refund for the said period on 27.10.2020, which was rejected on the ground that appeal was not filed against earlier order and therefore it attained finality.

The petitioner filed writ petition against the rejection of application and submitted that it could not file appeal electronically which is only mode of filing appeal against order due to non-receipt of an electronic copy of the order. Non-receipt of electronic copy of the Order-in-Original prevented the Petitioner from executing its Appeal filing remedy.

With above, the question placed before the High Court was to decide whether the Petitioner’s contention that it was handicapped in filing the appeal, which can only be filed through electronic mode, in absence of uploading of the order-in-original, was an acceptable stand or not.

On the above issue, the Hon’ble Gujarat High Court has held as under:

The Hon’ble Gujarat High Court noted that as per Section 169, any decision or order shall be served by giving or tendering it directly or by a messenger including a courier to addressee of taxable person. In the present case, the Petitioner also himself conceded that the order was served manually and Rule 108 prescribes that appeal has to be filed electronically, but it is nowhere prescribed that the same is to be filed only after impugned order is uploaded on GSTN Portal.

Further, the Court noted that merely because orders were subsequently uploaded will not render or save their appeals from having been time barred. Therefore, it was held that the limitation period to file appeal under Section 107 will start from date of service of manual order, even if order was not uploaded online and petitioner’s contention that it was handicapped in filing appeal, which can only be filed through electronic mode, in absence of uploading of such order on portal, was not acceptable. The Court therefore, dismissed the Petition with no order as to costs.