The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has introduced the facility of restoration of cancelled registration under Goods and Services Tax (GST) on its online portal. 

The move will provide relief to many taxpayers whose registrations were cancelled suo moto and the time period of application for revocation of cancellation already lapsed. 

In a communication to its field officers, CBIC said that a functionality in the name of ‘Restoration of Cancelled Registration’ has been developed and deployed w.e.f. 23.03.2022, to facilitate the jurisdictional Range officers to restore the registrations in pursuance of judicial or appellate orders. 

This functionality would cover both the cancellations ordered suo motu by Range officers without applying for revocation through form REG-21 and cancellation on the request from the taxpayers. 

Currently, a taxpayer whose registration is cancelled by the proper officer can apply for reversal of such cancellation of GST registration by applying Form GST REG-21. This application is required to be filed within 30 days of receiving the notice for the cancellation of GST registration, this was extended till 90 days on certain conditions. 

The move was initiated after direction from various appellate orders in their ruling against cancellation orders, passed suo motu by the Range officers, mostly during the pandemic. 

Last year Gujarat High Court, Calcutta High Court, Patna High Court and Orissa High court had ruled that goods and service tax registration cannot be cancelled if the business was not carried out from the premises, due to the nationwide Covid pandemic. 

They also instructed CBIC to restore such registration. 

"Since the functionality to implement the orders online was not ready, a temporary mechanism to restore cancelled registrations was created in the back-end,” the CBIC circular said. 

The Board has further said that the necessary permission to operate this functionality is being enabled for the jurisdictional range officers. 

CBIC said it has also directed the vendor Wipro to be prepared for troubleshooting for any error in the functionality. 

“As per the contractual obligations, the vendor (Wipro) is required to rectify the defects/ errors/ bugs noticed, if any, in the functionality within 30 days of its deployment to production," the circular said.