Today, the Supreme Court confirmed the Telangana High Court's ruling, which declared the Telangana Value Added Tax (Second Amendment) Act of 2017 as unconstitutional

A division bench of Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Aravind Kumar concluded that the amendments made in Telangana were deemed invalid due to a lack of legislative authority.

Case Brief -

In the said matter,the Court was hearing an appeal, challenging judgments of the Telangana High Court and the Bombay High Court.

Last year, in July the Telangana High Court declared the Telangana Value Added Tax (Second Amendment) Act of 2017 as unconstitutional.

The bench comprising, Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice P. Madhavi Devi had invalidated the Act and the notices issued under it. They asserted that the introduction of the GST regime by Parliament was aimed at eliminating the proliferation of taxes by consolidating various indirect taxes into a single tax system.

The Court found that after the 101st Constitution Amendment Act came into force in 2016, the State legislature’s competence was truncated. Therefore, the legislature did not have the competence to legislate the Second Amendment Act.

Furthermore, the Court concluded that Section 19 of the Constitution Amendment Act did not serve as a legal basis for empowering the State legislature to pass the Second Amendment Act, as it was a transitional provision.