GSTAT Says All Pending, Fresh Matters Must First Go Before Division Benches, Constitutes Benches Across India

The Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) has directed that all pending matters and future filings before its Principal Bench and State Benches must first be placed before Division Benches.

The law permits matters involving tax liability or other issues valued below ₹50 lakh and not involving any question of law to be listed before a Single Bench with the approval of the President.

In an office order dated May 14, 2026, GSTAT President Dr. Sanjaya Kumar Mishra said that under Section 109(8) of the CGST Act and Rule 110A of the CGST Rules, such matters may be listed before a Single Bench with the approval of the President.

However, invoking Rule 123 of the GSTAT (Procedure) Rules, 2025, which allows the President to pass orders to remove difficulties, the tribunal said all pending matters and future filings would first be listed before a Division Bench.

“I hereby decide and direct that all pending matters and future filings before the Principal Bench or the State Benches shall be listed before a Division Bench first. Only if the Division Bench comes to the finding that those cases do not involve any question of law, then it may record the reasons for the same and place it before the President or Vice-Presidents, as the case may be, for appropriate directions," the order said.

The order also constitutes benches across states and classifies disputes into three categories for administrative allocation.

Category I includes disputes involving classification of goods or services, applicability of notifications, valuation, input tax credit, tax liability, registration requirements, and proceedings involving tax short payment or fraud.

Category II covers registration-related disputes, cancellation and revocation proceedings, composition scheme matters, recovery proceedings, assessment orders, and refund-related disputes.

Category III includes seizure and confiscation matters, rectification orders, provisional attachment, penalty proceedings, compounding matters, and residual disputes.

The tribunal said Category III matters would ordinarily be heard by the bench dealing with the principal dispute from which such consequential proceedings arise, except at the Karnataka, Guwahati and Kolkata State Benches.

Benches have been constituted across multiple jurisdictions, including the Guwahati Bench for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura; the Delhi Bench; the Bengaluru Bench for Karnataka; the Hyderabad Bench for Telangana; the Patna Bench for Bihar; the Raipur Bench for Chhattisgarh; the Ranchi Bench for Jharkhand; and the Srinagar and Jammu Benches for Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.

The order also provides for multiple benches in larger states and regions, including the Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai Benches, along with the Puducherry Circuit Bench, for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry; the Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Surat Benches for Gujarat and the Union Territories of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu; the Jaipur and Jodhpur Benches for Rajasthan; the Chandigarh and Jalandhar Benches for Punjab and Chandigarh; the Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram Benches for Kerala and Lakshadweep; the Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Thane, Panaji and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Benches for Maharashtra and Goa; and the Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi and Agra Benches for Uttar Pradesh.

The order also allows members assigned to neighbouring jurisdictions or additional locations to hold virtual, hybrid, or circuit hearings in consultation with the concerned Vice-Presidents.

Members assigned to neighbouring states or different places of posting will be entitled to traveling and daily allowances equivalent to Level 17 Central Government officers, with the concerned benches required to provide necessary assistance for travel and stay.