M/S.Nithin Sai Constructions vs. The Commercial Tax Officer

HON'BLE SRI JUSTICE U. DURGA PRASAD RAO AND HON’BLE MS. JUSTICE J. UMA DEVI

Writ Petition No.13269 of 2020

ORDER: (per UDPR,J)

The petitioner seeks a Writ of Mandamus for the following reliefs. (a) the petitioner is entitled to avail the transitional credit of Rs.1,32,67,253/- reflecting in its electronic ledger pursuant to filing of GSTR-3B for the Month of March, 2020, in terms of section 140 of the CGST Act (b) the inaction of the respondents in permitting the petitioner to utilise the amount of transitional credit for payment of current Taxes, either by enabling the petitioner to file Tran-I electronically or by accepting the hard copy filed by the petitioner is arbitrary, illegal, contrary to Articles 14, 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India and consequently direct the respondents to permit the petitioner to adjust the transitional credit amount against the future tax payable or in alternative (c) direct the respondents to refund the transitional credit amount of Rs.1,32,67,253/- with interest to the petitioner immediately in the interest of justice and (d) to pass such other order or orders as the Hon’ble court may deem fit and proper the circumstance of the case as otherwise the petitioner will be put to irreparable loss and severe hardship.

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Counsel for respondent No.3 and Sri N. Harinath, learned Assistant Solicitor General of India for respondent Nos.4 and 5. 3. In respect of the nature of the prayers made in the writ petition, the argument of learned Government Pleader for Commercial Taxes and Sri M.V.J.K. Kumar is that, if the electronic ledger shows certain credit in favour of an assessee, he can certainly utilize the same for the purpose of paying output tax and in that context no departmental officer can obstruct it and to that extent the contention of the petitioner that the respondent officials interdicted from utilizing the credit amount is wrong. They further submitted that so far as prayer ‘c’ in the writ petition is concerned, an assessee will not be permitted to have the refund of the credit in the form of amount and on the other hand he will only be permitted to utilize for payment of the output tax.