Girdhari Lal Aggarwal Contractors vs. Union Of INDIA And Ors

Held

The Court held that the present Review Application (RA-CW No. 44 of 2020) is dismissed in terms of the previous order passed in RA-CW No. 479 of 2019 in CWP No. 4648 of 2019, decided on 29.11.2019. In that earlier order, the Court had found no grounds to review its judgment dated 04.11.2019 (which was the basis for the judgment dated 25.11.2019 in the present case). The Court reiterated its findings from the earlier judgment, emphasizing that unutilized credit under erstwhile Acts is a vested right and cannot be denied on procedural or technical grounds, especially considering the complexities of the new electronic GST regime. The Court also noted that the fact that the Gujarat High Court had stayed the implementation of its judgment in review was not a sufficient ground for the Punjab & Haryana High Court to review its own judgment. The Court stated that the appropriate remedy for the Revenue would be to approach the Supreme Court by filing an appeal. Therefore, the review application was dismissed.

Facts

This case involves a Review Application (RA-CW No. 44 of 2020) filed by respondent No. 4, seeking to review a previous judgment of the Punjab & Haryana High Court dated 25.11.2019. The original writ petition (CWP No. 32868 of 2019) had been allowed, directing the respondents to permit the petitioner, Girdhari Lal Aggarwal Contractors Pvt. Ltd., to file Form 'TRAN-1' by an extended date. The review applicant conceded that a similar review application filed by the Union of India (UOI) had already been dismissed by the same Court on 29.11.2019 in a related case (RA-CW No. 479 of 2019 in CWP No. 4648 of 2019). The dismissal of the UOI's review application was based on the Court's findings that the original judgment was not subject to review and that the revenue's remedy lay in approaching the Supreme Court.

Key Issues

1. Whether the Court should review its judgment dated 25.11.2019 in CWP No. 32868 of 2019, which allowed the petitioner to file Form 'TRAN-1' by an extended date, in light of a subsequent review application filed by the Union of India (respondent No. 4)? Petitioner's Arguments: The judgment does not record any specific arguments from the petitioner in this review application. However, the original writ petition was allowed based on the reasoning that unutilized credit under erstwhile Acts is a vested right that cannot be taken away on procedural or technical grounds, and that the GST regime's electronic mechanism was not well-understood by many, leading to plausible mistakes in filing forms like TRAN-1. The Court had relied on judgments from the Gujarat High Court and Delhi High Court. Revenue/Respondent's Arguments: The review applicant (respondent No. 4) conceded that a similar review application filed by the Union of India had already been dismissed by this Court. The grounds for the UOI's review application were that the Gujarat High Court, whose judgment was relied upon, had itself taken the matter in review and stayed its implementation. The UOI argued that this development warranted a review of the Punjab & Haryana High Court's judgment.