IMPORTANT POINT
The High Court will ordinarily not entertain a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution if an effective alternative remedy is available, particularly in tax-related matters, unless exceptional circumstances are present.

JUDGMENT :

VIJAY BISHNOI, C.J.

1. Heard Dr. A. Saraf, learned senior counsel, assisted by Mr. P.K. Bora and Mr. B. Sarma, learned counsel for the appellants. Also heard Mr. S.C. Keyal, learned Standing Counsel, Central Goods & Service Tax, appearing for all the respondents.

2. These 4(four) writ appeals have been preferred by the petitioner Company (appellants herein) being aggrieved with the judgment & order dated 19.06.2024 passed by the learned Single Judge in WP(C) No. 5398/2021, WP(C) No. 5358/2022, WP(C) No. 7336/2021 and WP(C) No. 780/2022, whereby the learned Single Judge has dismissed the above referred writ petitions with liberty to the petitioners to approach the Appellate Authority with a further direction that the period spent in this Court shall not be counted for calculation of the prescribed period of time.

3. The brief facts of the case are that the appellant Company is operating a Hospital and is providing treatment to the patients for various illness and ailments. In other words, the Hospital owned and operated by the appellant Company is offering healthcare services.

The case set up by the appellant Company before the writ Court is this that the appellant Company do not charge any GST from the in-house-patients and the tax paid on such internal transfer to the in-house-patients Department was not liable to be paid but on account of mistake, the same was paid in excess due to ignorance/lack of clarity of provisions of law. It is further contended that on seeking legal advice, the appellant Company came to know that the services provided by its Hospital to the in-house-patients were a composite supply of health services and was exempted from the payment of GST. At this stage, the appellant Company filed applications for refund of the said taxes paid by it under Section 54 of the CGST Act/SGST Act read with Rule 89 of the CGST Rules.

The Department, after receipt of the refund applications filed by the appellant Company, issued a deficiency memo to the appellant Company seeking further documents in respect of certain period and as per the appellant Company, the said documents were furnished through e-mail and whatever the deficiencies were pointed out were also cured.

4. Thereafter, the respondents issued show cause notices to the appellant Company directing it to show cause as to why the refund claim submitted by it should not be rejected on the ground that the exemption was given only for services provided (healthcare services) and not for goods and other items supplied. In the show cause notices, it was also mentioned that the taxes paid by the appellant Company for supplying the medicines, consumable and other items to their in-house-patients by the tax payer during the relevant period as per law and there was no excess payment of tax. Some other reasons have also been mentioned in the show cause notices, which have been duly taken note of by the learned Single Judge.

5. As per the appellant Company, after receiving the show cause notices, 2(two) weeks’ further time were sought for by it for giving reply to the said show cause notices. However, the said time was not allowed and the orders rejecting the claim of refund of taxes of the appellant Company has been issued on different dates stating that their case do not fall under Serial No. 74(a) of the Notification No. 12/2017 Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017.

6. In the writ petitions, the appellant Company has challenged the show cause notices issued by the respondent Department and the orders of rejecting their refund claims, details of which have been given by the learned Single Judge in Paragraph 3 of the impugned judgment & order.

7. The learned Single Judge has dismissed the above mentioned writ petitions considering the objection raised on behalf of the counsel for the respondents regarding the maintainability of the writ petitions on the ground of availability of an efficacious alternate remedy of appeal under Section 107 of the Central Goods & Services Tax