Portal is not a Postman

JEST GST - 445
JULY 29, 2026

By Vijay Kumar

THE GST era has produced many mysteries, but none more persistent than the touching belief that the GST portal is secretly a postman.

Taxpayers originally assumed the portal existed for modest, mundane chores: filing returns, paying taxes, generating e-waybills, and occasionally testing human patience with spinning loading wheels. What they never anticipated was that the portal had quietly been knighted as a courier service-entrusted with serving show-cause notices and demand orders.

For years, the Department operated under a comforting illusion - uploading a Show Cause Notice (SCN) or an Order-in-Original (OiO) into a shadowy corner of the website was legally identical to handing it to the taxpayer in person. Once uploaded, officers declared service complete, started the clock on limitation periods, and watched the appeal deadlines silently expire. In their minds, the portal wasn't merely a web server; it was a postman in pixel shoes, pedalling an imaginary cyber - bicycle.

Taxpayers, meanwhile, were forced to wander the platform like online archaeologists, brushing dust off ancient menus and forgotten hyperlinks: User Services, Notices and Orders, Additional Notices and Orders, and Miscellaneous. The portal functions like a text-based escape room-each level unlocks a new dropdown menu, and only the most desperate players ever reach the final chamber: View Additional Notices and Orders.

Is a notice or order uploaded in the portal a valid service? The Punjab and Haryana High Court last week held that the portal does not have and never had the power - to serve Show Cause Notices and Adjudication Orders.

Dozens of taxpayers approached the Punjab & Haryana High Court with the same plea:

We never received the notices.
We never saw the orders.
We never got a chance to appeal.

One of the petitioners, Luxmi Traders, is a proprietorship firm complying with GST requirements. A Show Cause Notice was issued on 27 September 2023, followed by an Order-in-Original (OiO) on 28 December 2023. These communications were not served on the taxpayer through any recognized mode.

No registered post.
No courier.
No e-mail with attachments.
No hearing notice.
No opportunity to respond.

Instead, everything was quietly uploaded under "View Additional Notices and Orders", a tab so obscure that even officers occasionally forget it exists.

By the time the taxpayer stumbled upon the order, the Department had already declared limitation expired. Luxmi Traders approached the High Court, and more than forty petitions were clubbed together - all involving the same issue: portal upload treated as service, appeal dismissed as time-barred, taxpayer left helpless.

(2026-TIOL-867-HC-P&H-GST)

It soon emerged that the portal was never authorised to issue notices or orders - a major lacuna in law that went unnoticed all these nine years.

The Taxpayers' Case: Clear, Simple, Unanswerable

Their arguments were straightforward:

1. Section 169 does not permit service by portal upload unless the portal is notified for that purpose.

2. Section 169(1)(d) allows service by making it available on the common portal - but only if the portal is notified for that purpose under Section 146.

Section 146 notifications so far cover only:

- registration

- returns

- payments

- e-waybills

- e-invoicing

- IGST settlement

Service of notices or orders is not included.

Therefore, uploading an SCN or order on the portal cannot be treated as service.

3. E-mail intimation is not service.

The Department's e-mail merely says, "an order/SCN has been uploaded," but:

- it does not attach the order,

- does not mention contents,

- does not specify hearing date.

The Court noted,

"The communication is merely confined to an intimation… without the notice or order itself being attached."

• Since service never happened, limitation under Section 107 never began, and appeals cannot be dismissed as time-barred.

The Government's Defence: Energetic but Unconvincing

The Government's defence was spirited but ultimately unsuccessful. It argued that:

- Section 169(1)(d) allows portal service,

- E-mail intimation should count as service,

- Most taxpayers file appeals on time, proving that the system works

- The portal was modified in January 2024 to place the "View Notices and Orders" and "View Additional Notices and Orders" tabs side by side for convenience.

But as the Court pointed out,

Ease of access is irrelevant unless the portal is legally notified for service.

The Court's Findings: A Landmark Decision

The Court's reasoning was crisp and devastatingly clear:

- No notification was issued under Section 146 to authorise the portal to serve notices or orders.

- The portal is notified only for registration, returns, payments, IGST settlement, e-waybills, and e-invoicing.

- E-mail without attachment is not service.

- Rules do not prescribe portal upload as service.

- Law must be followed strictly.

The Court invoked the classic principle:

"When a statute prescribes a thing to be done in a particular manner then it has to be done in that manner alone."

And concluded:

"Uploading of notice and orders on the Common Portal is not an authorized mode of service."

R.K. Laxman and the Invisible Investigation

The great cartoonist R.K. Laxman once had a brush with officialdom. Bombay Customs detained a book he had imported, and nearly a year later he received a polite letter from the Assistant Collector informing him that "a lenient view" had been taken and he was being let off.

Laxman wrote in Idle Hours that he was astonished - he had not even known he was under investigation. He wondered whether Customs sleuths were peeping into his bedroom to study his reading habits. His point was simple:

You can become an accused without ever knowing it, until a benign officer decides to let you off.

GST has merely digitised this experience.

Instead of peeping into bedrooms, the system now hides notices under View Additional Notices and Orders and later declares that limitation has expired.

The technology has changed; the absurdity stubbornly remains.

The Portal Maze: A Bureaucratic Escape Room

The Department's e-mail strategy deserves a standing ovation. Sending an automated message saying, "An order has been uploaded" without attaching the file is GST's version of the childhood game Guess What I'm Thinking-except here the stakes involve tax demands, penalties, interest, cancelled registrations, and ruined appeal rights.

The Government's argument that most taxpayers eventually find their notices and file appeals on time is particularly rich. That is like saying most people eventually find the needle in the haystack, so the haystack is a valid filing system.

The Court's Directions: Rights Restored

The Court issued sweeping directions:

- Service of SCN cannot be deemed sufficient merely on account of its uploading on the Common Portal, unless its receipt is acknowledged or a reply is filed.

- Where SCN is served only by way of uploading it on the Common Portal and in the absence of reply filed by the petitioner/assessee concerned, ex-parte order is passed in original, the proceedings would stand restored to the stage of issuance of SCN and the petitioner would be at liberty to file reply to the SCN within four weeks.

- Where the order-in-original is passed after contest and is served only by uploading it on the Common Portal, the period of limitation for filing of appeal would not be triggered, and the assessee aggrieved will have the right to file an appeal within four weeks.

- Where appeals filed against the order-in-original, which was served only by uploading it on the Common Portal are dismissed on the ground of limitation, the order of the Appellate Court shall be set aside and the appeal would stand restored and would be heard and decided on merits.

- Where SCNs were served only on portal and ex-parte adjudication order was passed for want of reply of assessee and appeal against the said order was dismissed on the ground of delay, both adjudication order and order-in-appeal shall be set aside and proceedings will be restored at the stage of issuance of SCN and petitioner/assessee shall be at liberty to file reply to SCN within four weeks.

These directions restore statutory rights and prevent injustice caused by non-service.

The Court's Suggestions: Making the Portal Workable

The Court advised the Department to modernize the portal by providing:

- prominent dashboard alerts

-mandatory pop-ups

- OTP- based acknowledgements

- SMS notifications

- dedicated notices section

Only then will the portal become an instrument of effective communication rather than a digital maze.

What Will the Government Do?

This judgment has national implications.

Until the portal is formally authorised, it cannot issue notices.

And the irony is striking - fixing this massive legal defect is absurdly simple. The Government only needs to issue notifications - a change that does not require Parliament, only a notification.

But has something been missed in the High Court? As per Section 146, the purposes for which the portal may be used must be prescribed-and 'prescribed' means prescribed by Rules, on the Council's recommendation. This crucial step appears never to have been taken, a gap the judgement does not address. Will it be done now?

The real question now is:

Will the Government quietly amend the Rules, or will it take this landmark judgment to the Supreme Court?

If GST wants taxpayers to respond to notices, it should first tell them where the notices are.

The Court has settled the issue: the portal, at least for now, cannot pretend to be a postman. And GST's longest-running myth has finally been laid to rest.