The Kerala High Court dismissed the writ petition as a taxpayer who failed to file a reply to the show cause notice and did not produce the document in support of his claim is not entitled to approach the Court.  Meera V Menon, R Sreejith, K Krishna, Achyuth Menon, Parvathy Menon and Padmanathan K V appeared for the petitioner. Smt Reshmita Ramachandran appeared for the respondent. Dileep Divakaran, the petitioner challenged the order passed by the 1st respondent issued under Section 73 of the Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST/SGST) Act 2017 demanding the CGST and SGST along with interest and penalty for an amount of Rs.7,46,638/-. GST DRC-01 has been issued in pursuance of the order under Section 73(9) of the CGST/SGST Act 2017.

The petitioner was issued a show cause notice. However, the petitioner did not file any reply nor appear for a personal hearing. In view thereof, the best judgment assessment has been passed as the petitioner failed to file a reply to show cause notice, did not even participate in the proceedings and failed to avail the opportunity of hearing.

The petitioner, instead of taking recourse to the statutory remedy within the time prescribed under Section 107 of the CGST/SGST Act, has approached the Court impugning the DRC-07 and not the order passed under Section 73(9) of the CGST Act. It was observed that a taxpayer who failed to file a reply to the show cause notice and does not produce the document in support of his claim is not entitled to approach the Court.

A single bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh viewed that the writ petition is not maintainable since the petitioner approached the Court after the statutory period of limitation is over and he did not respond to the show cause notice, nor did he avail the opportunity of hearing. The Court dismissed the writ petition. To Read the full text of the Order CLICK HERE