Point of Law: High Court will ordinarily not entertain the petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, involving recovery of taxes, cess, fees or other types of public money. It cannot be gainsaid that any stay of an action initiated by the State or its authorities for the recovery of taxes etc. would have serious implication on the authorities in discharging their constitutional and legal obligations.

ORDER :

BELA M. TRIVEDI, J.

1.The petitioner, by way of the present petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, has prayed for the following prayers:-

“A. This Hon'ble Court may be pleased to issue of writ of certiorari or writ in the nature of certiorari or any other appropriate writ or order quashing and setting aside the impugned order dated 09.10.2020 (annexed at Annexure A) passed by the learned Gujarat Value Added Tax Tribunal and the appeal may please be ordered to be heard without insistence of any further pre-deposit or security;

B. In the alternative this Hon'ble Court may be pleased to quash and set aside the appeal orders as well as re-assessment order dated 07.03.2019 and the matter may please be remanded to the assessing authority for fresh assessment after verifying documents to be produced by the Petitioner;

C. Pending notice, admission and final hearing of this petition, this Hon'ble Court may be pleased to restrain the learned Respondent from making coercive recovery in relation to the subject matter of the petition and the learned Tribunal may also be restrained from proceeding further in the matter;

D. Ex parte ad interim relief in terms of prayer may kindly be granted;

E. Such further relief(s) as deemed fit in the facts and circumstances of the case may kindly be granted in the interest of justice for which act of kindness your petitioners shall forever pray.”

2. As emerging from the memorandum of the petition, a search was conducted by the State Tax Officer(1), Enforcement, Division-1, Ahmedabad on 04.04.2018 under Section 67 of the Gujarat Value Added Tax Act, 2003 (hereinafter referred to in short as 'GVAT Act'), on which date, the statement of the petitioner was recorded. On the basis of the said statement of the petitioner, the respondent authority had initiated proceedings of reassessment under Section 35 of GVAT Act. The show-cause notices dated 17.01.2019 and 11.02.2019 were issued by the respondent authority, in response to which detailed written submissions were produced by the petitioner. However, the respondent authority passed the reassessment order on 07.03.2019, and raised the demand under GVAT and CST Act including tax, interest and penalty for the Assessment Years 2013-14 and 2014-15.

3. Being aggrieved by the said order of reassessment, the First Appeals were filed by the petitioner, under Section 73 of GVAT Act read with Section 73 of the CST Act which came to be dismissed for non-payment of pre-deposit amount vide order dated 30.03.2019 passed by the First Appellate authority. The petitioner being aggrieved by the said order filed Second Appeals being No.301/2019 to 304/2019 before the Gujarat Value Added Tax Tribunal at Ahmedabad. The said Appeals have been admitted by the Tribunal vide order dated 09.10.2020, and the stay against recovery is granted on the condition that the appellant shall deposit 15% of the tax dues towards pre-deposit instead of 25% as directed by the first appellate authority within one month. Being aggrieved by the said order of the Tribunal, the petitioner has invoked the extra ordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.

4. The bone of contention raised by learned Advocate for the petitioner is that the Tribunal could not have taken into consideration the turnover of the petitioner for both the accounting years for the purpose of determining the amount of pre-deposit. In this regard he has placed reliance upon the unreported judgment of this Court in the case of Crystal Alloys Ltd. v/s. State of Gujarat (Special Civil Application No.14977/2019 and Others) decided on 26.02.2020. He also submitted that the amount of tax liability as determined by the concerned Officer on reassessment or the Assessment years 2013- 2014 and 2014-2015 being very high, he had requested the first appellate authority to hear the Appeals without insisting for the payment of pre-deposit amount, however the said appeals having been dismi