The Delhi High Court has issued a pan-India direction to all GST authorities not to allow any GST registration without biometric-based Aadhaar authentication henceforth, observing that despite the passage of nearly nine years since the enforcement of the CGST Act, the authorities have failed to curb the rampant practice of obtaining fraudulent GST registrations by misusing PAN Card and Aadhaar Card numbers of innocent citizens, resulting in massive revenue loss and harassment of individuals who have no connection with such registrations. The order by Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Shail Jain in W.P.(C) 12210/2026 and W.P.(C) 6218/2026 (Neha and Vikram Kaushal, decided 08.09.2026) arose from two cases where petitioners alleged that GST registrations were fraudulently obtained in their names without their knowledge.
The court noted the Minister of State for Finance’s disclosure in the Rajya Sabha that 2,800 fraudulent GST registrations involving Rs. 15,085 crores of tax evasion were detected in 2023-24, and 1,654 fraudulent registrations involving Rs. 13,109 crores in 2024-25 — all obtained using stolen or frozen PAN/Aadhaar details. Despite the minister’s assurance that biometric Aadhaar-based authentication had been made mandatory, the court found that the implementation remained confined to cases flagged as ‘risky’ by the system’s analytics engine, and had not been universally mandated. The court accepted suggestions placed by Senior Counsel Tarun Gulati (appointed amicus) including mandatory facial recognition with Aadhaar database, video-based PAN/Aadhaar verification, IP address and device location logging, real-time data sharing with the Income Tax Department, and Digilocker consent mechanisms. The court warned that if an effective solution is not found, it would pass appropriate and effective orders. The matter is listed for further consideration on 22.09.2026.
- 2026-juristway.com-2544-HC(Delhi)-GST | High Court of Delhi | W.P.(C) 12210/2026 & 6218/2026 | 08.09.2026