Delhi HC: a GST order passed without deciding a pending request for more time breaches natural justice

A company facing a show-cause notice under the central GST law sought to quash an adjudication order after the department passed it without responding one way or the other to the company's email seeking ten more days to file additional material. The department argued the writ petition should be dismissed because an appellate remedy existed and it had, in any event, waited nine extra days before deciding. The Delhi High Court held the writ was maintainable despite the alternative remedy, applying the exceptions settled in Whirlpool Corporation v. Registrar of Trade Marks, (1998) 8 SCC 1 — that the self-imposed rule of exhausting statutory remedies does not bar a writ where fundamental rights are at stake, the order is wholly without jurisdiction, an Act's vires is challenged, or, as here, principles of natural justice have been violated.

The Court found the department's own counter-affidavit admitted it had granted time till a specific date, and that the petitioner's request to extend time to that very date had not even been noted before the order was passed. Holding that a quasi-judicial authority must at least decide a pending request for time before acting on a party's supposed silence, the Court set aside the adjudication order and remanded the matter for a fresh decision from the stage the proceedings had reached on the date the extension was sought.