Skip to main contentSkip to content
Home › Knowledge Hubs › Notice, Reply, Deadline & Case Law Tools › Limitation and Response Deadlines

Limitation and Response Deadlines Across Major Indian Laws

A side-by-side comparison of notice-response, appeal and limitation periods across seven regimes.

Limitation and Response Deadlines

The same fact pattern — "we received a notice" — carries a completely different clock depending on which law issued it.

Comparison tableWorked examples

1. Why a single "how many days do I have" answer does not exist

Every regime below fixes its own response window, its own appeal window, and its own rule on whether a missed deadline can be condoned at all. Some appellate forums (GST's Appellate Authority, the NCLAT) have a hard outer limit beyond which even genuine hardship cannot extend the deadline; others (the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals), the ITAT) can condone delay for "sufficient cause" without an equivalent hard statutory ceiling. Treating every notice as if it carries the same 30-day or 45-day rule of thumb is one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes in notice handling.

2. The comparison table

LawFirst-stage notice/response mechanicAppeal 1Appeal 2Can the deadline be condoned?
GST (CGST Act)Section 73 (no fraud) or Section 74 (fraud/suppression) show-cause notice; under Section 73, paying tax and interest within 30 days of the notice caps the penalty at the higher of 10% of tax or ₹10,000Appellate Authority — 3 months from communication of the order (Section 107)Appellate Tribunal, per the current forum for the relevant periodAppellate Authority: 1 further month only, on sufficient cause — this is a hard outer limit; the Limitation Act's general condonation provision cannot extend it further
Income TaxAssessment/reassessment/penalty communication — must carry a Document Identification Number (DIN) under CBDT Circular 19/2019 or it is treated as never issuedJoint Commissioner (Appeals) or Commissioner (Appeals) — 30 days from service of the order or demand notice (Income-tax Act, 2025, Sections 356–357, using Form 99; the equivalent under the now-superseded 1961 Act was Section 249(2))Income Tax Appellate Tribunal — 60 days from receipt of the first-appeal order (Income-tax Act, 2025, Section 362; the equivalent under the 1961 Act was Section 253)Yes at both stages, for sufficient cause, without the same hard outer cap that GST and NCLAT impose
CustomsShow-cause notice under Section 28 for duty not levied, short-levied, short-paid or erroneously refunded2 years from the relevant date where no collusion, wilful misstatement or suppression is alleged5 years from the relevant date where collusion, wilful misstatement or suppression of facts is allegedThe 2-year/5-year figures are themselves the limitation period for issuing the notice, not for replying to one already issued
Companies Act / NCLTAdjudication or e-adjudication order under the Companies ActNCLAT — 45 days from the order (Section 421)—A further 45 days only, on sufficient cause — a hard 90-day outer limit in total
SEBIShow-cause notice citing a specific Regulation; order of SEBI or an Adjudicating OfficerSecurities Appellate Tribunal — 45 days from receipt of the order (Section 15W, SEBI Act)Supreme Court, on a question of lawYes, on sufficient cause; SAT must then dispose of the appeal within 6 months of receipt
IBCSection 8 demand notice (Form 3/Form 4) to the corporate debtorCorporate debtor has 10 days to pay or to notify an existing dispute (Section 8(2))Operational creditor's Section 9 application becomes maintainable only after that 10-day period expiresSilence within the 10 days does not itself bar the corporate debtor from later proving a genuine pre-existing dispute in the Section 9 proceeding
Negotiable Instruments Act (cheque dishonour)Payee must issue a demand notice within 30 days of receiving the bank's dishonour memoDrawer has 15 days from receipt of that notice to payComplaint must be filed within 30 days of the expiry of the 15-day period (i.e. roughly one month after the cause of action arises)Courts have allowed condonation of a delayed complaint on sufficient cause, but the safer course is to calendar all three windows precisely
Code of Civil Procedure, 1908Section 80 requires 2 months' written notice to the Government or a public officer before filing most civil suits against them——A small set of urgent-relief exceptions exist under Section 80(2), but they require the court's leave and are not a substitute for giving notice wherever avoidable
A note on the Income Tax row above: the Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the Income Tax Act, 1961 with effect from 1 April 2026 and renumbered essentially every section of it, though the appellate structure and the 30-day/60-day periods themselves carry over unchanged. A notice or order dated after that day falls under the 2025 Act's numbering; a matter genuinely tied to an earlier tax year can still validly proceed under the 1961 Act's own provisions, which is why both citations are given here rather than only the current one.

3. The pattern worth remembering

Three distinct designs recur across these regimes. First, a hard outer limit with a short, fixed condonable extension — GST's Appellate Authority (3 months + 1 month) and NCLAT (45 days + 45 days) both work this way, and both are enforced strictly because the statute itself displaces the general Limitation Act. Second, a condonable deadline with no comparable hard ceiling — the Income Tax appellate chain and SAT both allow "sufficient cause" condonation without an equivalent absolute cutoff written into the section. Third, a chained set of short windows that must each be individually tracked — the NI Act's 30-day/15-day/30-day sequence and IBC's single 10-day window are triggers for the next step in the process, not appeal periods at all. Before assuming any deadline can be extended, check which of these three designs applies — a matter governed by a hard-outer-limit regime should never be planned around the more forgiving assumption that "the tribunal can always condone a short delay," because for GST's Appellate Authority and the NCLAT, once the additional condonable month or 45 days has also lapsed, no amount of genuine hardship reopens the door.

4. A worked example

A company receives a GST Section 74 show-cause notice and, separately, a demand notice from a vendor's counsel citing Section 138 of the NI Act over a dishonoured cheque, in the same week. Treating both as "roughly a month to respond" would be a mistake in both directions: paying the GST tax and interest within 30 days of the SCN caps the penalty exposure under Section 73's logic but is a different calculation once Section 74's fraud allegation is in play, while the cheque matter has its own independent 15-day payment window running from the vendor's notice — a window that has nothing to do with the GST clock and cannot be paused while the GST matter is being worked through. Both clocks need to be logged the moment each notice is classified, ideally in the Litigation Deadline Tracker on this hub, precisely because they run independently and a missed cheque-matter deadline is not cured by having handled the GST matter correctly.

5. Q&A

QuestionFinin2min answer
If I miss the GST Appellate Authority's 3-month-plus-1-month window entirely, is there any other route?The Appellate Authority itself has no jurisdiction to condone delay beyond the additional one month — any further route would depend on constitutional or writ remedies before a High Court, which is a materially different and less certain path than a normal statutory appeal.
Does paying within 30 days of a GST Section 73 notice end the matter?It caps the penalty exposure at the higher of 10% of the tax or ₹10,000 under Section 73 specifically — it does not, by itself, resolve a Section 74 fraud allegation, which carries a different and more serious framework.
Can the IBC 10-day window be extended?No — it is a fixed statutory period before a Section 9 application becomes maintainable, not an appeal deadline capable of condonation, though not responding within it does not itself prevent a later dispute from being raised and considered.

Finin2min Crux

Calendar every deadline the moment a notice is classified, and check which of the three deadline designs applies — a hard-outer-limit appeal (GST, NCLAT), a condonable appeal with no equivalent hard ceiling (Income Tax, SAT), or a chained sequence of short windows that trigger the next step rather than an appeal (NI Act, IBC) — because assuming the wrong design is what turns a manageable notice into a missed deadline.

Source log

Home Insights All Hubs

© 2026 Finin2min · Author: CA Nikhil Gupta.