Full Judgment Text
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* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
+ W.P.(C) 3736/2018
KRISH AUTOMOTORS PRIVATE LIMITED ..... Petitioner
Through Mr. Aseem Mehrotra and Mr.
M.K.Gandhi, Advocates
versus
UNION OF INDIA & ORS. ..... Respondents
Through Mr. Anurag Ahluwalia, CGSC,
Mr. Kartikeya Rastogi &
Mr. Abhigyan Siddhant, Advocates
for Respondent No.1
Mr. Harpreet Singh & Mr. Satyakam,
Advocates for Customs.
CORAM:
JUSTICE S.MURALIDHAR
JUSTICE TALWANT SINGH
O R D E R
% 16.09.2019
Dr. S. Muralidhar, J. :
1. The Petitioner, registered under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act,
2017 („CGST Act‟) has filed this petition inter-alia seeking a direction to
the Respondents to permit the Petitioner to file the GST TRAN-I manually
and allow the credit of Input Tax Credit („ITC‟) of Rs. 1,41,02,394/- claimed
in accordance with Section 140 (3) of the CGST Act, 2017, in its online
electronic credit ledger for payment of its output liability under the GST
laws.
W.P.(C) 3736/2018 Page 1 of 6
2. The Petitioner is a dealer/distributor of Maruti Suzuki India Limited and
is engaged in the business of trading and servicing of motor vehicles and
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parts and accessories of said motor vehicles. On the appointed day i.e. 1
July, 2017 when the CGST Act came into force the Petitioner was entitled to
a credit of Rs.1,41,02,394/- in respect of the duties paid at the time of
purchase of goods/stock on which central excise duty had already been paid.
In terms of Rule 117 of the CGST Rules, 2017, the GST TRAN-1 was
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required to be filed by 30 September, 2017. Later, this time limit was
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extended till 30 November, 2017 and then till 27 December, 2017.
3. The Petitioner states that in view of the maze of compliance due dates,
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with the time extended time for filing the form GSTR-1 ending on 31
December, 2017, the accountant of the Petitioner is said to have missed
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noticing that the time for filing GST TRAN-1 was extended only till 27
December, 2017. The Petitioner was accordingly not able to file the GST
TRAN-1 declaration online within time and claim the ITC of the eligible
amounts. Thereafter, in order to be permitted to manually file the GST
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TRAN-1, the Petitioner made two representations dated 8 March and 19
March, 2018 to the jurisdictional GST Authorities, as well as representations
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dated 20 March, 2018 and 21 March, 2018 to the Ministry of Finance,
Union of India and the GST Council respectively. With no response having
been received from any of the aforesaid authorities, the Petitioner filed the
present petition claiming the above relief.
4. Mr. Aseem Mehrotra, learned counsel for the Petitioner placed reliance on
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a judgment dated 6 September, 2019 of the Gujarat High Court in Special
W.P.(C) 3736/2018 Page 2 of 6
Civil Application No.5758/2019 (M/s. Siddharth Enterprises v. The Nodal
Officer) whereby in similar circumstances the High Court has permitted the
Petitioners in those cases to file the declaration in GST TRAN-1 and GST
TRAN-2 to enable them to claim ITC under Section 140 (3) of the CGST
Act, notwithstanding that they were unable to do so within the extended time
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limit of 27 December, 2017.
5. This Court too has in a series of orders recognized the difficulties faced
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by tax payers in filing the GST TRAN-1 within 27 December, 2017. In
some of those cases, the inability to file the GST TRAN-1 was due to
technical glitches.
6. A sampling of such orders of this Court is as under:
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(i) Order dated 13 May, 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 1280/2018 (Bhargava
Motors v. Union of India 2019 SCC online Del 8474)
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(ii) Order dated 22 July, 2019 in W.P.(C) No.3798/2019 (M/s Blue
Bird Pure Private Limited v. Union of India)
(iii) Kusum Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India 2019-TIOL-1509-
HC-DEL-GST,
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(iv) Order dated 9 August, 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 762/2019 (Chogori
India Retail Limited v. Union of India) and
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(v) Order dated 20 August, 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 8970/2019 (The Tyre
Plaza v. Union of India)
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(vi) Order dated 20 August, 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 8971/2019 (Sikka
Motors Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner, Central Goods and Service Tax)
W.P.(C) 3736/2018 Page 3 of 6
7. In Bhargava Motors (supra) , the Petitioner was unable to file the TRAN-
1 form on account of technical glitches. This Court referring to the decision
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of the Madras High Court dated 10 September, 2018 in W.P.(C) No.
18532/2018 in Tara Exports vs. Union of India held as under:
“11. In the present case also the Court is satisfied that the
Petitioner‟s difficulty in filling up a correct credit amount in the
TRAN-1 form is a genuine one which should not preclude him
from having his claim examined by the authorities in accordance
with law. A direction is accordingly issued to the Respondents to
either open the portal so as to enable the Petitioner to again file
TRAN-1 electronically or to accept a manually filed TRAN-1 on
or before 31st May 2019. The Petitioner‟s claims will thereafter
be processed in accordance with law.”
8. In Blue Bird Pure Private Limited (supra), in similar circumstances it
was held in paragraphs 12 & 13 as under:
“12. In the present case, the Court is satisfied that, although the
failure was on the part of the Petitioner to fill up the data
concerning its stock in Column 7(d) of Form TRAN-1instead of
Column 7(a), the error was inadvertent. The Respondents ought
to have provided in the system itself a facility for rectification
of such errors which are clearly bona fide. It should be noted at
this stage that although the system provided for revision of a
return, the deadline for making the revision coincided with the
last date for filing the return i.e. 27th December, 2017. Thus,
such facility was rendered impractical and meaningless.
13. The Court also notes with some concern that the
representations repeatedly made by the Petitioner were not
attended to by the Respondents which resulted in the Petitioner
having to approach this Court for relief. The apprehension of
the Respondents that orders of the kind in Bhargava Motors
(supra) and Kusum Enterprises (supra) can open the „flood
gates‟ can easily be allayed by the Respondents themselves if
they provide a robust Grievance Redressal Mechanism that can
W.P.(C) 3736/2018 Page 4 of 6
address such genuine grievances of the traders instead of
compelling every trader to approach this Court for relief.”
9. In Tyre Plaza (supra) the Petitioner was not able to fill the GST TRAN-1
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form for claiming ITC by the deadline of 27 December, 2017. After that
date, the GST Network had disallowed any request for online submission of
the TRAN-1 Form and accordingly, the Petitioner, filed the TRAN-1 form
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manually on 31 May, 2019 with its jurisdictional officer. Relying on its
orders in Bhargava Motors v. Union of India 2019 SCC OnLine Del 8474 ,
Kusum Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India [W.P.(C)7423/2019] and
Sanko Gosei Technology India Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India & Ors. [W.P.(C)
7335/2019], the Court held as under:
“6. As pointed out in earlier orders of this Court, there appear to
be technical errors or technical glitches of various kinds in the
GST system, which is still in the ‘trial and error’ phase. There
is merit in the contention of the Petitioner that in its case, if it
was not able to even connect with the server, then at the end of
the Respondents, the fact of a failed attempt at filing a return
may not even be registered on the system. Added to this is the
fact that the Petitioner’s eligibility to claim ITC in the sum of
Rs.65,03,389/- has not been disputed by the Respondents in
their reply.”
10. The Court is satisfied in the present case that the Petitioner was unable to
fill the TRAN-1 Form on account of bonafide difficulties and that, therefore,
the Petitioner should be afforded one more opportunity to do so.
11. Accordingly, a direction is issued to the Respondents to permit the
Petitioner to either submit the TRAN-1 form electronically by opening the
electronic portal for that purpose or allow the Petitioner to tender said
W.P.(C) 3736/2018 Page 5 of 6
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form manually on or before 15 October, 2019 and thereafter, process the
Petitioner‟s claim for ITC in accordance with law. The petition is disposed
of in the above terms.
S. MURALIDHAR, J.
TALWANT SINGH, J.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
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