The work on setting up the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) Appellate Tribunal seems to be picking up steam now and it is expected to be set up over the next few months.
“The objective is to ensure that the GST Appellate Tribunal is operationalised at the earliest. It is likely to be done by the end of the year or early 2025, at the latest,” said a person close to the development, adding that the initial aim of setting them up by the middle of this year may get slightly delayed.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had on May 6 administered the oath of integrity and secrecy to Justice (Retd) Sanjaya Kumar Mishra as the President of the GST Appellate Tribunal.
The government is also in the process of appointing judicial and technical members for the appellate tribunal. In February this year, the finance ministry had sought applications for a total of 96 posts in the GST Appellate Tribunals. In all, there are 63 vacancies for the post of judicial members and 32 for technical members (Centre) and 1 for a technical member (state).
GSTAT will have one principal bench at Delhi and 31 state benches at various locations across states. While Uttar Pradesh will have three benches, while states including Gujarat, Maharashtra will have two benches each.
The Centre had notified the benches of the GST Appellate Tribunal in September last year, almost six years after GST was launched in July 2017. The tribunal is expected to help in faster and more effective resolution to GST disputes, besides significantly reducing the burden on higher courts and have been a key ask of India Inc, with companies facing long delays in getting their cases heard in the High Courts.
According to data, over 14,000 such appeals are pending regarding Central GST with High Courts by August 2023 and the numbers are seen to have risen further.
GST taxpayers can approach the High Court for relief in case of a dispute arising on tax demands and orders from the first appellate authority.
