Tanvi Sinha
The Delhi High Court tells Goods and Service Tax (GST) authority to decide on a petitioner’s offer of handing over their immovable property to release their frozen bank accounts.
A division bench of Justices Rajeev Sahai Endlaw and Sanjeev Narula gave the GST a specific time period within which the authority had to respond to the petitioner’s offer.
This comes after the petitioner, Mahavir Transmission Ltd, gave a plea to the court to quash impugned letters where the GST authority had told their bank to freeze their accounts and provisionally attach the bank accounts of the petitioner.
The court had passed an interim order that granted permission to the Ltd by which they could use the overdraft facility that they enjoyed from the banks they used (namely ICICI, Standard Chartered Bank and Allahabad Bank).
However, the authorities filed a status report in response where they made allegations against the petitioner alleging connections with fraudulent availing and passing on of ineligible Input Tax Credit by the Petitioner.
Advocate Harsh Sethi for the Petitioner submitted that via freezing of the bank accounts being a hardship as valuable security the petitioner has offered their immovable properties under Section 83 of the CGST Act 2017.
The petitioner stated that the GST department was free to examine and investigate the title/ownership to judge the market value of the immovable property and only if they are satisfied with the same could take it as security.
The court then stated that the authorities would only accept the property if it were of a value no less than the tax amount in dispute and that it would be free from subsisting charges, liens, mortgages or encumbrances, property tax fully paid up to date and not involved in any legal conflicts.
