GST Officer's Competence Can Be Challenged Before Appellate Authority: Delhi High Court Declines Writ

The Delhi High Court has declined to entertain a batch of writ petitions challenging GST proceedings and penalty orders.

The court held that the petitioners can raise their objections, including the alleged lack of competence of the officers who issued the show-cause notices, before the statutory appellate authority.

The Division Bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Shail Jain held that the objection regarding the competence of the officers did not constitute a “patent or self-evident absence of jurisdiction” warranting interference under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The proceedings arose out of a GST investigation into the issuance of fake invoices without actual supply of goods and wrongful availment of Input Tax Credit.

The proceedings involved 629 entities, with the aggregate tax and penalty liability running into hundreds of crores of rupees.

Petitioners had primarily questioned the competence of the officers who issued the Section 122 show-cause notices. They contended that the officers had not been specifically assigned the relevant functions under Section 122 when the notices were issued and that a subsequent Circular dated October 27, 2025 could not retrospectively validate the proceedings.

The High Court however noted that the statutory scheme distinguishes between the rank or designation of an officer and the assignment of a particular statutory function.

“The expression 'proper officer' in Section 2(91) is function-specific. Merely being an officer of central tax, therefore, does not, by itself, answer the question whether that officer is the proper officer for every function under the Act. At the same time, the assignment of functions may be effected through the statutory and administrative instruments issued by the Board in exercise of the powers under Sections 3 and 5.”

It considered Notification Nos. 02/2017 and 14/2017-Central Tax, under which officers of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence were invested with powers of central tax officers of the corresponding rank.

The court observed that the effect of these notifications, read with the subsequent Circular dated October 27, 2025, involved interpretation of the statutory scheme and the interaction between proceedings under Sections 73 or 74 and consequential penalties under Section 122.

It therefore held that the objection to the officer's competence could not be treated as a patent jurisdictional defect.

The Court also noted that Petitioners had raised several factual and evidentiary objections, including non-supply of relied-upon documents, denial of effective personal hearing, etc. which required detailed examination of the record.

As such, it relegated Petitions to statutory remedy.

For Petitioners: Advocates Pradeep Singh Rawat, Lalit Mohan Pant and  Abhinav Kalra,

For Respondents: Advocates Harpreet Singh, SSC along with Iqbal Singh Bedi and Mr.Latin Kumar Gaur