Delhi High Court supports, investigations by various jurisdictional GST Authorities to be transferred to the DGGI, help bring under one roof

Delhi High Court supports, investigations by various jurisdictional GST Authorities to be transferred to the DGGI, help bring under one roof

To integrate all investigations initiated by different jurisdictional GST authorities under one roof, the Delhi High Court has upheld the transfer of these investigations to DGGI.

A petitioner, Indo International Tobacco Ltd., manufactures and supplies tobacco products. Having been registered with the jurisdictional office in Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh in the petitioner's case, the firm obtained GST registration by the said office, the principal place of business of the petitioner's firm being within the jurisdiction of the same office.

In their petition, the petitioners argued that nowhere in the CGST Act is references made to the word "investigation" or to the officers who have authority to carry out particular investigation. Under Section 2(91) of the CGST Act, only proper officers have the power to exercise CGST functions. Using Section 6(1) of the CGST Act, he argues that the officers appointed by state governments are also proper officers for the purposes of the CGST Act.

Therefore, can exercise all powers conferred on the CGST Act. In his view, Section 6(2) of the CGST Act makes it clear that if the State Government's SGST officer has already begun enforcement proceedings, then the CGST officers are not permitted to take up any further enforcement action on the same issue, which is taking action based on information about the entire taxpayer base regardless of whether the taxpayer is administratively assigned to any authority, or to the entire value chain of the particular taxpayer.

Several jurisdictional authorities initiated investigations against different entities, as stated by the division bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Manmohan. DGGI and AZU have been brought together to form a single investigation into these matters, as the respondents contend there are common threads between these investigations. It is not prohibited under the CGST Act that such transfers can occur. The provisions of Section 6(2)(b) of the CGST Act have restricted application, and, therefore, do not apply to the facts of the present lawsuits. In addition, the Circular dated 5th October, 2018 does not pertain to the facts of the present petition.