$~7 * IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI + W.P.(C) 10548/2024 LOKSATYA MEDIA PRIVATE LIMITED. .....Petitioner Through: Adv. (appearance not given)

versus COMMISSIONER OF CENTRAL GOODS AND SERVICE TAX DELHI EAST & ANR. .....Respondent Through: Mr. Gibran Naushad, Senior Standing Counsel with Mr. Harsh Singhal, Mr.

Suraj Shekhar Singh, Advs.

Mr. Harpreet Singhm Senior Standing Counsel, Mr. Iqbal Singh Bedi, Ms.

Suhani Mathur, Mr Jatin Kumar Gaur, Advs.

CORAM:

HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE NITIN WASUDEO SAMBRE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE AJAY DIGPAUL

O R D E R

% 20.02.2026

1. The respondent, Ministry of Finance, issued a notification dated 28^th December, 2023, in the exercise of powers conferred under Section 168A of the CGST Act, notifying the date for the financial year 2018-2019 upto 30^th April 2024.

2. In the aforesaid background, the Show Cause Notice (‘SCN’) issued to the petitioner on 11^th December, 2023, was adjudicated, and it is the contention of the respondent that the order was uploaded a day before i.e. on

29^th April 2024.

3. As against the above, the counsel for the petitioner questions the validity of the order, contending that it has lapsed as it was not passed within the statutory period of limitation.

4. He would claim that the order was available on the portal for the first time on 03^rd May, 2024. According to him, as a necessary statutory corollary, the impugned order would lapse, and as such, it cannot be executed, nor can any liability cannot be fastened upon the petitioner.

5. We have considered the aforesaid contentions in the light of the respective affidavits of the respondents.

6. The counter affidavit in the form of preliminary submissions submitted by the Assistant Commissioner, CGST states as under-

“6. For purposes of further clarity, the following is the manner in which the Order came to be signed:

i.The concerned officer is required to affix his digital signature on the impugned order in eOFFIE_CBIC (which is an online file system) using their office computer system. In the present case the impugned order was singed on 29.04.2024 at 11:39AM.

ii.After affixing their digital signatures on the Impugned Order in eOFFICE CBIC, the order is then uploaded at the GST ACES portal by the inspector through the superintendent and thereafter it is sent to the competent authority (in the present case the Assistant Commissioner) for approval.

iii.After approval of the same it is automatically uploaded on the OST portal and no further action is required thereafter. In the present case the order attained finality on 29.04.2024 and the same was uploaded on

29.04.2024 at 05:43 PM.

7. Therefore, clearly in view of the above, the said Order has been uploaded within the period of limitation as prescribed under sub-section 10 of section 73 of COST Act, 2017 and extended time to time by various notification(s) issued by the Government of India; and the contention of the Petitioner that the Order is beyond the period of limitation is misplaced on facts and law.

8. The Petitioner, to buttress its contentions, has annexed a copy of the screenshot of the OST portal which seems to suggest that the date of issuance of the Order was 03.05.2024. In this regard, it is submitted that the Order was issued on 29.04.2024; and the date 03~05.2024 does not reflect the date of issuance of Order but it is in fact the date on which the order was reflected on the Petitioner's GSTN portal.”

7. The aforesaid aspect is further clarified by the short affidavit of the respondent who is working as Vice President (legal). The para 7 of the said affidavit reads thus:-

“7. Further, the G2G API submission and batch processing could not be completed on the same day, resulting in the observed gap between the officer’s approval date (29.04.2024) and the date of availability of the order for the taxpayer on the GST portal (03.05.2024), as a result of incidents reported by the AJMT (Application Batch Job Monitoring & API Data Exchange Monitoring) from around 29th April 2024 till around 3r