GSTAT: Centre appoints key members, states to follow suit

new delhi: The government has set in motion the process of making GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) fully functional and has appointed technical and judicial members for various benches of the tribunal.

The government had in May 2024 appointed Justice (Retd.) Sanjaya Kumar Mishra as the President of the Principal Bench of GSTAT.

As per a notification dated August 4, 2025, the government has appointed Mayank Kumar Jain, retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, as a juidicial member of the bench. Retired IAS officer A Venu Prasad and retired IRS officer Anil Kumar Gupta will be the Technical Member (State) and Technical Member (Centre) respectively of GSTAT, Principal Bench, New Delhi.

States too will have to appoint technical members in their respective state benches to make the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) fully functional, which will help expedite dispute resolution.

The government has already notified 31 state benches of GSTAT.

For the state benches, the government has in total appointed 31 Technical Members and 52 judicial members.

Only a few states, like Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Bihar, and Maharashtra/Goa, have sent their recommendations for appointment of technical members in GSTAT in their respective states.

Currently, in the absence of a functioning GSTAT, all disputes between a taxpayer and GST department go to High Courts or Supreme Court which take lot of time in resolving them.

Also, the delay in dispute resolution results in blocking of capital, and hence the industry has been pressing the Government to quickly operationalise GSTAT.

The delay in setting up GSTAT was also noted by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance which has asked the Finance Ministry to adopt a “time-bound” approach and “actively pursue and coordinate” with all states to make GSTAT benches fully functional.

The Revenue department in its Action Taken Report to the Standing Committee has assured that hearing of cases by the GSTAT benches will start “very soon”.

The Parliamentary Committee, in its observation which was tabled in the Lok Sabha on August 4, acknowledged that numerous considerations, infrastructure developments, and formalities are needed to be addressed before the operationalisation of GSTAT.