The Calcutta High Court has held that it is the duty of the Assessing Officer (AO) to dispose of written objection submitted by assessee for re-assessment.

The bench of Chief Justice T.S Sivagnanam and Justice Bivas Pattanayak has observed that the duty cast upon the assessing officer is to decide the written objections given by the assessee to the proposed reopening and passing a speaking order and if the order goes against the assessee, the assessee has a liberty to challenge the order by filing a writ petition as no other alternative remedy is provided under the provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

The department challenged the order passed by the Tribunal in the appeals filed by the assessee as well as the department against the order passed by the Commissioner of Income Tax by which the CIT(A) affirmed the assessment order. 

Though several issues were raised before the learned Tribunal the first issue taken up for consideration by the Tribunal was whether the assessing officer was right in not disposing of the written objection submitted by the assessee for reopening of the assessment. 

In fact, the ground was canvassed by the assessee before the CIT(A) which call for a remand report but unfortunately the assessing officer did not submit the remand report and the CIT(A) proceeded to take a decision on merits and particularly allowed the appeal of the assessee but with regard to the percentage of the gross profit rate on the entire turnover and made a restriction thereof. 

The court while dismissing the department’s appeal held that the assessing officer did not follow the procedure laid down by the Court in GKN Driveshafts [India] Ltd.

Case Details

Case Title: PCIT VS Champalal Omprakash

Case No.: ITAT/5/2025

Date: 05/02/2025

Counsel For Appellant: Aryak Dutt, Soumen Bhattacharjee

Counsel For Respondent: J P Khaitan, Sr. Adv. Mr. Akhilesh Gupta, Adv. Mrs. Swapna Das, Adv. Mr. S. Das

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