Tax Insights

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1 PwC pwc.in

17 November 2022

Supreme Court directs CG to expedite steps to ensure filing of appeals and proceedings by the CG before High Courts and Revenue Tribunals in electronic mode and the operation should be paperless in case of GST Tribunal

In brief

The Supreme Court directed¹ the Central Government (CG) to take steps to ensure that the filing of appeals by it and proceedings before High Courts and Revenue Tribunals (including the Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal [CESTAT] and the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal [ITAT]) should take place in the e-filing mode within a period of three months.

The Supreme Court further directed that while the modalities of the GST Tribunal are being put in place, the CG should ensure that all filings are exclusively in the electronic mode and that the GST Tribunal’s operation should be paperless.

In detail

• Earlier, the Revenue Department had filed an appeal before the Supreme Court against the order passed by the Ahmedabad bench of the CESTAT, along with an application for condonation of delay of 536 days in filing the appeal.

• While the delay in filing the appeal was eventually condoned, the Supreme Court took cognizance of the fact that appeals in revenue matters involving indirect taxation are being filed with a gross delay repeatedly.

• The Supreme Court further observed that the Department of Revenue must find a solution for the state of affairs by ensuring that matters requiring to be litigated are done with all the necessary dispatch and that matters not worthy of pursual are set to rest.

• The Supreme Court requested the Solicitor General to appear and appraise the court of the steps which the CG would take in this regard.

• Thereafter, the CG constituted a committee comprising various stakeholders (High-Powered committee) to adopt Information and Communication Technology (ICT) initiatives to streamline, monitor and provide seamless integration of all the stages of Government Revenue litigation across the board. Steps were taken to integrate various Revenue Tribunals, including the CESTAT and ITAT, on a common ICT platform.

1 2022-VIL-91-SC

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2 PwC Tax Insights

• The Supreme Court, vide order dated 14 November 2022, has directed the CG to take all expeditious steps to ensure that filing of all appeals by the CG and proceedings before the High Courts as well as Revenue Tribunals, including the CESTAT and ITAT, should take place in the e-filing mode.

• The Supreme Court directed that the High-Powered Committee formed by the CG will proceed to take the necessary steps to achieve the goal of e-filing of appeals by the CG within a period of three months from the date of the order.

• The Supreme Court further directed the CG that while the modalities of the GST Tribunal are being

formulated there should be a requirement in place that all filings should be in the electronic mode only. The GST Tribunal should be paperless in its operation.

The takeaways

The initiative to implement electronic filing of appeals and proceedings before High Courts and Tribunals (including the GST Tribunal) will help in the timely management and disposal of pending litigations. The process of digitisation of litigation proceedings will go a long way to address the issue of record management and tracking of files in the courts and Tribunals. While these measures are welcome, the continuation of optional e- hearing for the cases before courts and Revenue Tribunals would also further ease the litigation process.

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In this document, “PwC” refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers Private Limited (a limited liability company in India having Corporate Identity Number or CIN : U74140WB1983PTC036093), which is a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited (PwCIL), each member firm of which is a separate legal entity.

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