Refunds already sanctioned by orders cannot be hold mere on the ground of provision of appeal

Case Details:

Issue- In the above case, the petitioner has filed the present petition inter alia praying that directions be issued to respondent No. 2 and 3 to disburse the refund for the period, May, 2019 to December, 2019, which, according to the petitioner, is payable in implementation of the order dated 20-9-2021 passed by the Appellate Authority, Joint Commissioner (Appeals). The petitioner also claims interest on the amount of refund due.

Held- It was held that the petitioner was engaged in the manufacturing of various types of liquid printing inks and as per inverted duty structure he could not fully utilize his input tax credit and thus filed an application for refund which was rejected by respondent authority. Appeal was made to appellate authority where in refund of petitioner was found genuine, Petitioner again filed refund application but the same was not processed. Clearly, it is not open for the respondents to ignore the orders passed by the Appellate Authority merely on the ground that it has decided to appeal those orders. It would be debilitating to the rule of law, if the respondents are permitted to withhold implementation of the orders passed by the authority in this manner. Therefore, petition was allowed, and respondent authority were directed to process the refund request of petitioner along with applicable interest.