Thadukkassery Service Co Operative Bank Ltd VS State Tax Officer

Petitioner, Society, has approached this Court seeking specific judicial reliefs through the instant writ petition. The primary requests are: firstly, to quash the orders identified as Exts.P4 to P4(za) issued by the first respondent via the issuance of a writ of certiorari or similar order or direction; and secondly, to direct the respondents to validate the registration from 01.07.2017 as per Ext.P2 by issuing a writ of mandamus or comparable writ or direction.

It is noted that the orders Exts.P4 to P4(za) are ostensibly appealable under Section 107 of the Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. Nonetheless, Mr. Harisankar V. Menon, during the proceedings, contended that these orders lack jurisdiction, which is why extraordinary writ jurisdiction of this Court is being sought.

The background leading to this petition involves the petitioner society, which is an entity assessed under the Income Tax Act, 1961. Due to an inadvertent error, the society was issued two separate Permanent Account Numbers (PANs), namely AAEAT6828L and AACTT3061G. Upon discovering this mistake, the society sought to rectify the issue, which has led to the current legal challenge.

The Income Tax Department, through a communication dated 13th July 2016, informed the petitioner that only the PAN number AAEAT6828L would remain active, while the PAN number AACTT3061G would be deactivated. Consequently, the PAN number AACTT3061G was deactivated. At the time, the petitioner was registered as a dealer under the old Kerala Value Added Tax Act, and was filing taxes under this statute. Following the introduction of GST, the petitioner transitioned to the new GST system. However, due to an oversight, the migration process was carried out using the deactivated PAN number AACTT3061G. As a result, the petitioner was assigned a GST registration number 32AACTT3061G2ZR, which was based on the deactivated PAN. Upon realizing this mistake, the petitioner applied for a new GST registration and was subsequently issued a new registration number 32AAEAT6828L1Z5 effective from 16th February 2018.

In a case involving the cancellation of a previous GST registration number, the petitioner submitted an application on September 29, 2018, requesting the cancellation of registration number 32AACTT3061G2ZR. The petitioner, represented by Sri Harisankar Menon, argued that since March 2018, they had been filing accurate returns under the new GST certificate, Ext.P2, and these returns had not been disputed by the authorities. Despite this, the first respondent issued separate orders on September 30, 2019, for the period from July 2017 to October 2019 under Section 62 of the CGST Act. These orders demanded a total payment of Rs. 9,99,174 towards tax and Rs. 2,87,728 towards interest, as detailed in Exts.P4 to P4(za). The counsel argued that these demands arose solely because no returns were filed under the invalidated registration number 32AACTT3061G2ZR due to an error with the PAN number. The petitioner contended that the error was neither intentional nor willful and had been rectified by March 2018 with the new GST registration.