GST Council recommendations bind notification-making; unauthorized expansion and retrospective ratification of excess were held invalid.

GST notifications issued under Sections 9 and 11 must remain within the GST Council's recommendations, and the Government cannot expand them by adding terms not contained in the approved text. Here, the insertion of "enforceable right in a court of law" and the related affidavit mechanism exceeded the recommendation and was invalid to that extent, while the remainder of the notifications stayed operative. The GST Council also has no implied power to ratify prior unauthorised notifications, because the Constitution and the statute confer a power to recommend, not retrospectively validate excess. The consequential show cause notices were set aside.

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Issues: (i) Whether notifications issued by the Central Government under Sections 9 and 11 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 could travel beyond the recommendations of the GST Council; (ii) Whether the GST Council had the power to ratify the notifications issued by the Central Government under Sections 9 and 11 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017.

Issue (i): Whether notifications issued by the Central Government under Sections 9 and 11 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 could travel beyond the recommendations of the GST Council.

Analysis: The GST Council's recommendations are binding on the Government when it exercises subordinate law-making power under the GST regime. Notifications issued under Sections 9 and 11 must therefore be made "on the recommendations" of the Council. The impugned notifications, while tracing their source to the Council's recommendation, added the expression "enforceable right in a court of law" and the related affidavit mechanism, which were not part of the recommendation. This amounted to an expansion beyond the Council's approved text. The addition could not be sustained as being supported by the recommendation itself.

Conclusion: The notifications were ultra vires to the extent they introduced the expression "enforceable right in a court of law"; in all other respects, they remained valid.

Issue (ii): Whether the GST Council had the power to ratify the notifications issued by the Central Government under Sections 9 and 11 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017.

Analysis: The Constitution confers on the GST Council the power to make recommendations, not to ratify prior unauthorised notifications. Ratification is not an inherent power of a constitutional or statutory body and must be expressly conferred or necessarily implied. Since neither Article 279A nor any statute granted such power to the GST Council, its subsequent approval could not validate the notifications already issued beyond recommendation.

Conclusion: The GST Council had no jurisdiction to ratify the impugned notifications, and the purported ratification was ineffective.

Final Conclusion: The challenge succeeded in part: the impugned notifications were struck down only to the extent of the unauthorized enlargement, the consequential show cause notices were set aside, and the writ petitions were allowed.

Ratio Decidendi: When the GST Council's recommendation is the statutory foundation for notification-making under the GST enactment, the Government cannot enlarge the content of the notification beyond that recommendation, and the Council cannot retrospectively validate such excess by ratification absent an express constitutional or statutory power.

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