Amit Mahajan JUDGMENT
Vibhu Bakhru, J.
1. The petitioner has filed the present petition, essentially, aggrieved by the denial of refund of unutilised input tax credit (ITC) accumulated in respect of the Goods and Services Tax paid on inputs in respect of the zero-rated supplies-goods exported without payment of Integrated Goods and Services tax (IGST)-during the period from July 2017 to March 2018.
2. The petitioner impugns an Order-in-Original dated 11.03.2020 whereby the Proper Officer rejected the petitioner's application for refund on the ground that it was filed beyond the period of two years as specified under Section 54(1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 (hereafter 'the CGST Act').
3. The petitioner appealed the said decision before the Appellate Authority, but was unsuccessful. The petitioner's appeal was rejected by an Order-in-Appeal dated 06.08.2021, which is also impugned in the present petition. The orders dated 11.03.2020 and 06.08.2021 are hereafter referred to as 'the impugned orders'.
4. Although, the petitioner has a statutory remedy of an appeal before the Tribunal, but he is unable to avail the same as the Tribunal has not been constituted.
Factual Context
5. The petitioner is an individual and carries on the business of, inter alia, exporting goods and services under the name of its sole proprietorship concern, M/s Sethi Sons (India).
6. The petitioner had exported eight consignments during the period from July 2017 to March 2018. The first consignment was exported on 08.09.2017 under the export invoice dated 02.09.2017 and the Shipping Bill dated 04.09.2017. The last of the eight consignments was exported on 29.01.2018, which was covered by export invoice dated 24.01.2018, under a Shipping Bill dated 25.01.2018.
7. The petitioner attempted to file an application for refund of unutilised ITC for the month of August 2017 on 14.05.2018. However, the petitioner could not complete the online filing of this application due to a technical error encountered on the GST portal.
8. The petitioner once again attempted to file an application for refund of unutilised ITC for the month of July, 2017 on 08.08.2018. However, the petitioner was unable to complete the process on account of technical errors encountered on the GST Portal.
9. Aggrieved by being unable to file the applications for refunds online, the petitioner filed a complaint on the GST portal under the GST Redressal Section. The petitioner's complaint was acknowledged and a ticket bearing no.2018080832227 was issued.
10. The petitioner claims that he made several efforts to manually submit its application. However, the concerned officer declined to accept the same. This assertion is disputed by the respondents as the respondents do not have any record of the same.
11. The petitioner made a consolidated application (in FORM GST RFD-01) for the refund of unutilised ITC exports effected during the financial year 2017-18 on 05.02.2020 claiming a refund of ` 13,43,757/-.
12. The petitioner's application for refund under Section 54 of the CGST Act was rejected on the ground that it was filed beyond the period of two years from the relevant date being the date of export of the consignments. The Proper Officer held that since the first consignment was exported on 08.09.2017, the last date for filing an application for refund of unutilised ITC in respect of the said export was 07.09.2019. The last consignment was exported on 29.01.2018 under an export invoice dated 24.01.2018. Therefore, the Proper Officer held that the last date for filing refund in respect of the said exports was 24.01.2020. The Prope........