The personal hearing is mandatory — even if you never asked
Section 75(4) requires an opportunity of hearing where the taxpayer requests it or where any adverse decision is contemplated. The second limb is the powerful one: High Courts across Allahabad (B.L. Pahariya Medical Store, Mahaveer Trading), Madras, Delhi and Calcutta have held with near-unanimity that before any adverse order, a personal hearing must be offered — even where the taxpayer filed no reply, and even where the taxpayer mistakenly ticked ‘No’ against the hearing option in the portal reply. Recent 2026 decisions reiterate that a wrong portal selection is not a waiver. An adverse order passed without offering a hearing is a nullity, and courts routinely set such orders aside and remand for fresh adjudication.
A vague notice is no notice
The Supreme Court held in Oryx Fisheries that a show cause notice issued with a closed mind — treating the noticee as already guilty — violates natural justice at the threshold. In the GST era, the Jharkhand High Court's NKAS Services line established that uploading a bare DRC-01 summary, without a substantive notice disclosing allegations, grounds and relied-upon material, is no show cause notice at all. And the Allahabad High Court's 2025-26 decisions add that where fraud is alleged, the specific acts of fraud or suppression must be recorded in the notice itself — a system-generated mismatch table with a conclusory sentence does not qualify.
Uploading is not always serving
Section 169 lists the valid modes of service. But a large body of 2024-2026 authority — led by the Madras High Court — deals with a very modern problem: notices and orders lodged only under the portal's ‘Additional Notices and Orders’ tab, which many taxpayers never knew existed, with no e-mail or postal follow-up. Where taxpayers remained genuinely unaware and were set ex parte, courts have treated the service as ineffective and remanded the matters — usually on terms of a partial deposit. The practical lesson cuts both ways: the department must serve effectively, and the taxpayer must check every portal tab weekly.
The order cannot travel beyond the notice
Two more statutory guarantees complete the framework. Section 75(7): the confirmed amount cannot exceed, and the grounds cannot travel beyond, the show cause notice — new grounds in the order are per se bad. Section 75(6): the order must state the facts and the basis of the decision; an order that does not deal with your reply is a non-speaking order inviting remand. And where the demand is built on third-party statements, the Supreme Court's Andaman Timber principle applies: denial of cross-examination of the witnesses whose statements form the foundation of the demand vitiates the order.
A real-world pattern
A taxpayer discovers, months later, an ex parte order confirming a ₹3.4 crore demand. The notice and reminders were uploaded only under ‘Additional Notices’; no e-mail was sent; no hearing was ever fixed. On the twin violations — ineffective service and denial of the mandatory hearing — the prevailing judicial practice is to quash or remand for fresh adjudication, lifting interim bank attachments. The right is real; but litigation could have been avoided entirely by a weekly portal check.
DSRV & Co. LLP regularly secures relief in matters involving ex parte orders, denial of hearing and defective notices — through adjudication, appeal and writ remedies. If you have discovered an order you never knew about, act immediately: limitation for the appeal runs from communication, and every week matters.
