After 7-year wait, GST Appellate Tribunal may finally be operational soon
While legal experts commended the appointment of the first president of the GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT), they opined that the government needs to also expedite the appointment of judicial and technical members to operationalise the Appellate Tribunal. The government, on May 6 appointed Justice (retd) Sanjaya Kumar Mishra as president of the GSTAT.
Rupender Sinhmar, central government standing counsel and Partner at BSM legal said, “This is certainly a welcome step, which was overdue for various legal and administrative reasons. GSTAT is still a bit far from reality as the appointment of other judicial and technical members is yet to be done. GSTAT’s judicial functions can only start after such appointments”. He noted that as an administrative head of the Appellate Tribunal, Mishra can push for appointments at GSTAT to give it full effect.
Benches of every tribunal in India must have a judicial member and a technical member. A judicial member is an expert on legal procedure while the technical member is an expert on the law a tribunal is adjudicating on. For instance, in the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), the judicial members are usually retired high court judges while the technical members are bureaucrats who retired from the Finance Ministry, Law Ministry or Commerce Ministry. According to a parliamentary response, a total of 14,227 GST appeals are pending as of August 2023, merely months after the GST council decided to notify the tribunal.
