Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunals (GSTAT)

• The Finance Ministry has notified 31 benches of GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) which will be set up in all states and Union Territories.

DISTRIBUTION

AS PER THE NOTIFICATION-

• Gujarat and UTs — Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, will have two benches of the GSTAT;
• Goa and Maharashtra together will have three benches.
• Karnataka and Rajasthan will have two benches each, while Uttar Pradesh will have three benches.
• West Bengal, Sikkim and Andaman and Nicobar islands; and Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will together have two GSTAT benches each, while Kerala and Lakshadweep will have one bench.
• The seven North Eastern states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura — will have one bench.
• All other states will have one bench of the GSTAT.

SIGNIFICANCE-

• Setting up of state-level benches of GSTAT would help businesses by way of faster dispute resolution.
• Currently, taxpayers aggrieved with ruling of tax authorities are required to move the respective High Courts.
• The resolution process takes a long time as High Courts are already burdened with backlog of cases and do not have a specialised bench to deal with GST cases.