Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 – s.83 – Central Goods and Services Tax Rules, 2017 – r.159(5) – Provisional attachment to protect revenue in certain cases – Provisional attachment orders issued against the appellant-taxpayer – Attachment orders lapsed upon expiry of a year – Respondent-revenue issued fresh provisional attachment orders terming it as a ‘renewal’ of the earlier orders – Writ petition by the appellant that the subsequent provisional attachment orders be quashed and the attachment lifted to enable the appellant operate its bank accounts – High Court dismissed the writ petition – Correctness: Held: Any order of provisional attachment, issued under subsection (1) of s.83, would cease to have any effect after a period of a year – Respondent could not have issued the impugned provisional attachment orders upon the previous ones having ceased to have any effect by operation of law after a year of its issuance – When a statute does not provide for an extension, renewal, re-issuance, revival, whatever be the nomenclature, the executive cannot overreach the statute to do so – Parliament, being cognizant of other taxing statutes, deliberately chose not to incorporate an extension provision in the section, also carries considerable merit – Not to speak of a statutory conferment of power, there is a complete absence of any executive instruction consistent with the legislative policy and intendment of the CGST Act authorizing renewal of a lapsed provisional attachment order – Issuance of the provisional attachment orders by the respondent appears to be indefensible – Conceding power to the revenue to issue a fresh provisional order of attachment after the initial order has lapsed by operation of law or to renew the same would render the text of sub-section (2) of s.83 otiose and accepting the reason assigned by the High Court would permit the revenue to exercise a power which is not the statutory intendment – Thus, no reason to read s.83 in a manner to confer any additional power over and above the draconian power conferred by sub-section (1) and upon lapse as ordained by sub-section (2) – Fresh issuance of a provisional attachment order premised on substantially the same grounds as the earlier one would be in disregard to the safeguard provided in sub-section (2) – Repeated or continuous issuance of a provisional attachment order under the garb of ‘renewal’ could lead to a serious anomaly – Besides, a reading of the statute in its entirety would reveal that the provisional attachment is a pre-emptive measure to protect the interests of government revenue – It cannot function as a recovery measure – Bank accounts attached by the respondent stand de-freezed and be made operable forthwith. [Paras 19, 29-32, 38-41]
Maxim – ut res magis valeat quam pereat – Meaning – Is an interpretive doctrine that a legal text, specially a statute, should be interpreted in a way that gives the document force rather than makes it fail. [Para 30]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Nidhi Jain. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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