Author: KingStubbandKasiva

As India’s GST regime enters a mature enforcement phase, notices for past assessment years have become a routine but consequential feature of the regulatory landscape. These notices are not findings of liability, but formal legal proceedings that can carry significant financial, operational, and reputational risk if mishandled.
Most GST notices arise from data mismatches, input tax credit scrutiny, audits, and analytics-driven enforcement, and may be issued several years after the underlying transactions. Ignoring or underestimating a notice almost invariably results in ex-parte orders, heightened penalties, and coercive recovery action.
The outcome of a GST notice depends less on the demand proposed and more on the quality, timeliness, and legal rigour of the response. Companies that approach GST notices strategically, combining documentation, legal analysis, and governance oversight are far better positioned to contain risk and resolve disputes at the notice stage itself.

Recent Supreme Court jurisprudence has fundamentally reshaped environmental regulation in the Aravalli hills—not through legislative change, but through a recalibration of how “forest land” is defined in law. By shifting from a purposive, ecology-centric interpretation to one anchored in formal records and statutory notification, courts have narrowed the scope of land subject to the Forest Conservation Act.
While this doctrinal shift enhances legal certainty and institutional restraint, it also reconfigures development incentives in one of India’s most ecologically fragile regions. Large tracts that function as forests in ecological terms now fall outside centralised scrutiny, accelerating construction and infrastructure activity through more permissive state-level regimes.
The Aravalli experience underscores a critical governance lesson: when environmental protection depends on interpretation rather than formal recognition, judicial restraint can quietly translate into irreversible land-use change.

A GST notice is not a routine tax communication, it is a risk event with balance-sheet, cash flow, and governance implications. Most disputes escalate not because the tax position is weak, but because the notice is misread, under-prioritised, or mishandled at the outset.
For CFOs, the first imperative is to identify the nature of the notice and the legal sections invoked, as these determine exposure, intent, and response strategy. Effective handling requires early re-quantification of real exposure, scrutiny of limitation and procedural defects, and a commercially sound decision on settlement versus contest.
A well-managed GST notice preserves value and credibility; a poorly managed one creates avoidable financial and reputational risk.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that convictions under the POCSO Act need not fail for want of medical evidence if ocular testimony is credible and consistent. In Dinesh Kumar Jaldhari v. State of Chhattisgarh (2025), the Court upheld a conviction for aggravated sexual assault on a four-year-old child, relying on consistent parental testimony and trauma-induced behaviour, despite the absence of external injuries. The ruling underscores that medical evidence is corroborative, not substantive, and that courts must adopt a sensitive, victim-centric approach where child victims may be unable to fully articulate their trauma. This jurisprudence ensures that justice is not defeated by technical gaps in forensic proof.

A registered sale deed, while legally essential, is not conclusive proof of ownership under Indian property law. The Supreme Court has consistently held that registration evidences the act of conveyance but does not validate the seller’s title or cure defects in the chain of ownership. True ownership depends on a lawful, continuous title supported by possession, not merely on procedural compliance with registration requirements.

India’s approach to arbitration is becoming more flexible and practical. Disputes involving fraud, intellectual property, and employment are no longer automatically excluded from arbitration. Instead, courts now examine whether the dispute concerns private contractual rights between parties or broader statutory rights that affect the public at large. This approach strengthens party autonomy while ensuring that matters of public interest remain protected. Overall, it shows India’s growing alignment with global pro-arbitration practices, even though some legal uncertainties still remain.