The Lucknow Bench held that an allegation of reuse of e-way bills must be established by cogent and positive evidence and cannot be sustained merely on presumption or inference drawn from dates of invoices.
The GST Appellate Tribunal's Lucknow Bench has dismissed a departmental appeal and upheld the quashing of a penalty of Rs. 14,11,251 imposed under Section 129 of the CGST/UPGST Act, holding that the department failed to produce any independent evidence of reuse of e-way bills and that the allegation was based on mere presumption [Akata Singh v. M/s Om Marketing].
The bench of Santosh Kumar Srivastava, Member (Judicial) and Arvind Kumar, Member (Technical) examined whether the First Appellate Authority was justified in setting aside the penalty imposed on the respondent, a lubricating oil dealer, whose goods had been intercepted at Nawada Toll Plaza, Kanpur.
The department's case rested on the driver's statement that goods were loaded on 09.07.2024, whereas certain invoices were dated 04.07.2024 and 08.07.2024. The department contended that the e-way bill extensions were used as a mechanism to reuse documents for multiple unrecorded trips. However, the Tribunal found that no independent evidence of an earlier movement — no prior delivery, unloading, return of goods, or second loading — had been brought on record.
Relying on the Allahabad High Court's decisions in M/s Hindustan Herbal Cosmetics v. State of U.P., Shyam Sel and Power Ltd. v. State of U.P., and the Supreme Court's decision in Hindustan Steel Ltd. v. State of Odisha, the Tribunal held that intention to evade tax is a sine qua non for imposition of penalty under Section 129, and that the extension of an e-way bill cannot by itself sustain a conclusion of reuse without corroborative evidence linking it to an earlier completed movement.
2026-juristway.com-3064-GSTAT(Lucknow)-GST
