ORAL ORDER

In this petition, petitioner seeks for the following reliefs:

“i. Issue a writ, order or direction in the nature of mandamus directing the Respondent No.1 to unblock the Electronic Credit Ledger of the Petitioner.

ii. Issue any other writ order or direction in the nature of certiorari quashing the letter (Annexure-B) dated 18.11.2024 issued by the Respondent No.2 bearing DIN – 20241157YY00000012069 O.C.357/24-25.

iii. Issue any other writ order or direction, which this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper under the facts and circumstances of the present case;

iv. Grant costs and interest; and

v. Grant such further and other reliefs as the nature and circumstances of the case may require.”

2. Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and learned counsel for respondents and perused the material on record.

3. A perusal of the material on record will indicate that the Electronic credit ledger of the petitioner was blocked by the impugned order by invoking Rule 86A of the Central Goods and Services Tax Rules, 2017 (for short ‘the CGST Rules’) which was communicated by the petitioner via text message dated 11.11.2024 at Annexure A. In this context, learned counsel for the petitioner invited my attention to the material on record in order to point out that before passing the impugned order, pre-decisional hearing was not provided to the petitioner nor does the impugned order contain any reason to believe as to why it was necessary to block the Electronic credit ledger and in view of the aforesaid contravention as held by the Division Bench of this Court in the case of K-9-ENTERPRISES vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA made in WA. No.100425/2023 and connected matters, the impugned order deserves to be quashed.

4. Per contra, learned Additional Government Advocate for respondents supports the impugned order and submit that there is no merit in the petition and the same is liable to be dismissed.

5. In K-9-ENTERPRISES (supra), the following points were answered in favour of the petitioner- assessee by holding as under:

"8.13 In view of the aforesaid discussion, we are of the considered opinion that the learned Single Judge clearly fell in error in coming to the conclusion that a pre-decisional hearing was not required to have been provided/granted to the appellants by the respondents-revenue prior to passing the impugned orders blocking the ECL of the appellants and consequently, the said findings recorded by the learned Single Judge deserve to be set aside.

9. The next point that arises for consideration is as to whether the respondents-revenue were justified in passing the impugned orders blocking the Electronic Credit Ledgers of the appellants by invoking Rule 86A of the CGST Rules which mandates that the respondents-revenue should have ‘reasons to believe’ that the ITC available in the ECL was fraudulently availed or was ineligible as contemplated in the said provision; in this regard, the learned Single Judge noticed that 2 pre- requisites/conditions had to be satisfied/fulfilled before invocation of Rule 86A and blocking the ECL of the appellants and held as under:

18. The first requisite of the Rule which is required to be considered by the competent authority is with regard to the basis of material available before he taking any action for blocking of electronic credit ledger. The second pre-requisite is of recording the reasons in writing for invoking the powers under Rule 86A of the Rules of 2017. Unless the aforesaid two pre-requisites are fulfilled, the competent authority cannot invoke the powers under Rule 86A of the Rules of 2017 for the purpose of disallowing the debit of the determined amount to the electronic credit ledger or to block the electronic credit ledger even to the extent of amount fraudulently or wrongly availed by the petitioners/assessee.

9.1 However, the learned Single Judge came to the erroneous conclusion that the respondents-revenue had fulfilled/satisfied the aforesaid twin/dual pre- requisites/requirements viz., re