The Delhi High Court on Monday morning postponed the hearing in the anti-profiteering matter under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to January after it found that here was no consensus between the tax department and the companies that had approached the court.
About 51 companies including HUL, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Acme developers, Samsonite, Jubilant Foods, Nestle, Whirlpool, Samsung, Subway, Samsonite, Reckitt Benckiser and Patanjali have dragged the Indian indirect tax department to court over anti-profiteering under GST. These companies had approached the high court earlier after they were penalised under the anti-profit mechanism of the indirect tax department.
The tax department had about 15 questions that they wanted to seek information from, while all the companies together had about 50 questions. The court in a proceeding would want both sides to arrive at a consensus on which is the pertinent questions for the court case. Because both sides stuck to their guns, the court would now have to address all the questions together. And this would take at least three to four weeks.
The court said that it would now hear the matter after the December vacations in January.