Order Date – 07 August 2023

Parties: Britania Industries Limited Vs Union of India

Facts – 

• The Petitioner, Britania Industries Limited, is a Public Limited Company engaged in the manufacture of food products such as biscuits, bread, rusk etc. The manufacturing unit is situated in SEZ and is engaged in the export of goods under Letter of Undertaking.
• A refund application was filed by the petitioner on accumulated unutilized Input Tax Credit of IGST distributed by the Input Service Distributor for services related to the SEZ Unit in its Electronic Credit Ledger.
• The same was rejected and the Order-In-Original (O-I-O) was manually served. A fresh refund application was hence filed on 27.10.2020. Accordingly show cause notice was issued and by an Order in Original dated 3.12.2020 the claim was once again rejected on the ground that once the Order dated 23.08.2019 rejecting the same claim was passed and no Appeal was filed the same having attained finality, the claim was not maintainable.
• Non-receipt of an electronic copy of the order prevented the petitioner from filing an appeal in the required electronic mode.

Issue – 

• Whether the petitioners can be prevented from filing their appeals through the electronic mode merely because the orders were not uploaded when the same was received manually?

Order – 

• The Appellate authority has power if sufficient cause is shown that the appellant was prevented from filing an appeal within three months then it can allow a further period of three months. Rule 108 provides that the appeal has to be filed in the form either electronically or otherwise as may be notified. That no other mode is notified and the only mode is an electronic mode is accepted.
• The Bombay High Court in the case of Meritas Hotel held that once the assessment order had become final as the petitioner had only applied for a copy of the order after the recovery proceedings were initiated, he had lost his statutory right to appeal.
• In the present appeal also the petitioners have filed the appeals only after the orders of recovery have been passed though being aware and being manually served with the orders dated 31.3.2021 and 29.4.2021 and therefore merely because the orders were subsequently uploaded will not render or save their appeals from the same having been time barred especially when recovery proceedings have already been done and orders to debit freeze accounts have been made in exercise of powers under Section 79 of the CGST Act.
• The petitions are accordingly dismissed