The Rajasthan High Court has directed the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN) to immediately allow assessee to login on the GST portal for completing migration process.
The bench of Justice Pushpendra Singh Bhati and Justice Munnuri Laxman has observed that due to the inability to login at the common portal and in the absence of the migration, the petitioner cannot file returns or pay taxes and discharge its GST liability from July 2017 onwards. In absence of the migration the petitioner-Firm is also unable to access the various online services which are available on the GST website.
Background
The petitioner/assessee is a Firm engaged in the business of shipping, logistic, clearing and forwarding operations. The petitioner-Firm was earlier registered under the provisions of the Rajasthan Value Added Tax Act, 2003 with the Commercial Taxes Department, Government of Rajasthan.
With effect from 1.7.2017, a new law was introduced namely Goods and Services Tax Act (GST) and in the GST Act, the State VAT Authorities were authorised by the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) for providing an ID and a Password to the existing dealers and migrating them from existing TIN numbers to new GST numbers.
In accordance with the Rule 24 of the CGST Rules/RGST Rules 2017, the petitioner-Firm enrolled itself at common portal, by validating requisite details, after which, a provisional registration number in Form GST REG-25 along with login credentials i.e. login ID and password have been provided to the petitioner-Firm on 28.06.2017.
After provisional registration, the petitioner-Firm submitted an application at common portal with requisite documents as required in terms of Rule 24(2)(a) of the CGST Rules/RGST Rules. However, the petitioner-Firm received an email on 30.09.2017 from respondent No.3 stating that details of Permanent Account Number (PAN) provided by the petitioner-Firm while submitting requisite documents are not matching with the details under the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) database.
The petitioner-Firm re-submitted all the requisite documents at common portal for re-issuance of GST provisional ID and password with correct PAN maintained by GSTN. However, after a considerable period of time, when the petitioner tried to login at the common portal with the credentials i.e. user Id and password provided at the time of provisional registration, the login was denied with a message that the last date for migration of existing taxpayer has already been passed. Whereafter, the petitioner-Firm through its consultant approached Jurisdictional Officers/Nodal Officers of the Rajasthan Goods and Services Tax Department.
The petitioner-Firm also approached the helpdesk team of GSTN and it received an email on 19.11.2018 from the helpdesk team, wherein the petitioner-Firm was directed to approach the Nodal Officer. In terms of the aforesaid email, the petitioner-Firm approached its jurisdictional Officer/Nodal Officer and submitted all the details/documents as required in terms of Rule 24(2)(a) of the CGST Rules/RGST Rules 2017 for completion of the process of migration.
Arguments
The petitioner contended that it has entered into various transactions with provisional GSTN issued by respondents under Section 139 of CGST Act/RGST Act read with Rule 24(1) of the CGST Rules/RGST Rules, but since the petitioner was unable to login at the GST portal, no returns in accordance with the provisions of CGST Act/RGST Act could be filed by the petitioner-Firm.
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Conclusion
The court while allowing the petition directed the GSTN to immediately allow the petitioner-Firm to login on the GST portal for completing the process of migration for uploading its returns and to deposit the due tax.
Case Title: M/s Shri Dayalu Enterprises v/s State Of Rajasthan
Case No.: D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 12830/2019
Date: 05/08/2024
Counsel For Petitioner: Mr. Prateek Gattani
Counsel For Respondent: Mr. Kuldeep Vaishnav and Mr. Adnan Belim
