The Madras High Court has resolved one of the most consequential procedural questions in post-assessment GST litigation: whether the time spent prosecuting a rectification petition under Section 161 of the CGST Act can be excluded when computing the limitation period for filing a statutory appeal under Section 107 — and, if so, on what conditions. In a common order covering 17 writ petitions, Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy has held that the principles underlying Section 14 of the Limitation Act (exclusion of time spent in bona fide proceedings before a court without jurisdiction or other cause of like nature) apply to proceedings before the GST Appellate Authority, and that a good-faith rectification petition — where there was some basis for filing it — qualifies for time exclusion even though the GST statutes do not expressly incorporate the Limitation Act.
The core question arose from a recurring factual pattern: a taxpayer receives an adverse assessment order, files a rectification petition under Section 161 within a reasonable time (hoping for correction of an apparent error), the rectification petition is rejected, and by the time the rejection order is received the three-month window for a Section 107 appeal (plus the one-month condonation ceiling) has either run or nearly run. Taxpayers argued that the time taken in pursuing the rectification petition should be excluded — just as Section 14 of the Limitation Act would exclude time spent in bona fide proceedings before a wrong forum. Revenue argued that GST statutes constitute a self-contained code and there is no power to condone delay beyond the Section 107(4) ceiling of one month.
The court navigated these competing positions with a careful textual and purposive analysis. First, it confirmed what was already settled: the Limitation Act as such does not apply to quasi-judicial bodies, and Section 5's principles (condonation for sufficient cause) cannot be invoked to condone delay beyond Section 107(4)'s one-month ceiling. The Supreme Court's rulings in Hongo India and The Property Company place this beyond doubt. Second — and this is the novel holding — the principles underlying Section 14 are not the same as Section 5. Section 14 operates as an exclusion of time, not as an extension of limitation; its rationale is that where a litigant bona fide pursued a proceeding that proved abortive (through no fault of their own), that time should not count against their limitation period. The court held that nothing in the GST statutes expressly or impliedly excludes this principle.
The court then addressed the conditions: (i) both proceedings must be between the same parties; (ii) they must relate to the same subject matter; (iii) the rectification petition must have been prosecuted with due diligence; and (iv) critically, it must have been prosecuted in good faith — meaning there must have been some genuine basis for filing the rectification petition, not merely a tactical manoeuvre to extend limitation. This fourth requirement is significant: it requires a threshold judicial examination of whether the rectification grounds had some merit. A taxpayer who files a wholly baseless rectification petition to buy time will not get the benefit. But where the rectification petition disclosed an internal inconsistency in the order, or non-consideration of documents that were on record, or an egregious error visible from the face of the order — those cases qualify.
On the extent of exclusion: applying M.P. Steel Corporation (SC), the excluded period is the entire time from filing of the rectification petition to its disposal — and the statutory three months for appeal (from the date of OIO) is also added, meaning the appeal can be filed within three months from the date of the rectification order's rejection. The ruling settles the question for practitioners across the country: the rectification-then-appeal path is legally available and time-protected, provided the rectification petition had genuine grounds. Taxpayers who missed their Section 107 window but had a valid rectification petition should audit their cases under this ruling.
2026-juristway.com-2298-HC(Madras)-GST | High Court of Madras | Batch of 17 Writ Petitions | W.P. Nos. 2629, 16914, 21252 & connected | 30.07.2026