The Tribunal held that a post-decisional hearing at the appellate stage is no substitute for the pre-decisional notice and hearing mandated by Rule 92(3).
The Thane Bench of the GST Appellate Tribunal has set aside partial rejections of export refund claims across 39 tax periods from June 2019 to September 2022, holding that the adjudicating authority’s failure to issue a notice in Form GST RFD-08 before rejecting any part of a refund claim vitiated the orders [Vikram Inderjit Kapur, Director, M/s Lavino Kapur Cottons Pvt. Ltd. v. Deputy Commissioner of State Tax, Tarapur].
The bench of Ramesh Nair, Member (Judicial) and Prallhad S. Paranjape, Member (Technical) took the August 2020 claim of the 100% EOU as the lead case, where Rs. 18,09,402 out of a claim of Rs. 63,17,232 was rejected with only the remark “Mismatch of ITC”. The Revenue admitted that no RFD-08 was issued, but argued that the hearings granted by the First Appellate Authority cured the defect.
Rejecting that argument, the Tribunal held that the word “shall” in Rule 92(3) and the proviso barring rejection without a hearing leave the officer no discretion. It observed that “a post-decisional hearing at the appellate stage cannot serve as a substitute for a pre-decisional statutory notice”, and that the Appellate Authority, having itself noted the breach of Rule 92(3), ought to have remanded the matter rather than demanding documents and deciding on merits.
All 39 matters were remanded for de novo processing. If any part is found inadmissible, the officer must issue a detailed RFD-08 with invoice-wise particulars, allow a reply in RFD-09, grant a hearing and pass a speaking order. The merits, including the cumulative application of Rule 36(4) for February to August 2020 under Notification No. 30/2020-CT, were left open.
2026-juristway.com-3110-GSTAT(Thane)-GST
