DRC-01 is the summary of a show cause notice under GST — the formal demand document a tax officer issues when they believe you have unpaid or short-paid tax, wrongly claimed input tax credit, or received an erroneous refund. It states the tax, interest, and penalty proposed and gives you a deadline to reply before a demand order is passed.
A DRC-01 rarely arrives out of nowhere. It typically follows unanswered scrutiny (ASMT-10) or a pre-notice intimation in DRC-01A, which offers a chance to pay with reduced or no penalty before the formal notice issues. The notice is served on the GST portal under your notices tab — not by email or post — which is exactly why many businesses discover it weeks late. Your reply goes in form DRC-06, and you can ask for a personal hearing.
When one lands, the sequence is: download the notice and its annexures, identify precisely what the officer is alleging (2B-versus-3B ITC gaps, GSTR-1-versus-3B turnover mismatch, and unpaid RCM are the usual suspects), and rebuild the reconciliation for those exact periods. If part of the demand is genuinely payable, paying it through DRC-03 before or with your reply substantially improves your position on penalty.
The fatal mistake is silence. Miss the deadline and the officer passes an ex parte order on the full proposed amount, after which you are into recovery proceedings and appeals — slower, costlier, and harder to win than a well-documented reply would have been. Check the portal notices tab weekly, or have your consultant do it.
Act on it
Reviewed to the law in force in FY 2026-27. General information, not advice — confirm the position for your facts before acting.