The Bombay High Court has quashed the reassessment notice on the grounds that the objections raised by assessee not rebutted by the Assessing Officer (AO) in the order.
The bench of Justice M. S. Sonak and Justice Jitendra Jain has observed that the jurisdiction of re-opening has to be tested on the touchstone of the reasons as recorded and nothing can be added or subtracted thereform. Neither in the reasons recorded nor in the order deciding the objections it is stated that the re-opening is done on the basis of audit objections.
The assessee filed the writ petition challenging that there is no allegation of any failure to disclose fully and truly any material facts necessary for the assessment as mandated by first proviso to Section 147 of the Income Tax Act and, therefore, the jurisdictional condition is not satisfied. It clearly demonstrated that reasons are based on what is filed during the course of the regular assessment proceedings.
The successor Assessing Officer is seeking to re-open on the ground that the predecessor officer has not computed the assessed income correctly. Therefore, the proceedings are without jurisdiction and bad in law.
The department contended that the re-opening was done based on the audit objections and, therefore, that constitutes new and tangible information for assuming jurisdiction.
The court noted that the Petitioner in its objections had raised the jurisdictional objections which are required to be satisfied before reopening the case. None of these objections has been rebutted by the Assessing Officer while disposing the order rejecting the objections. The order rejecting objections merely reproduces various judgments.
The court held that in the absence of any rebuttal to the objections raised by the Petitioner, it shall be presumed that the Respondents have accepted the objections raised by the Petitioner and, therefore, the proceeding is liable to be quashed.
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Case Details
Case Title: Shrenik Kumar N. Baldota Versus Deputy Commissioner of Income
Case No.: Writ Petition No.1331 Of 2022
Date: 20 January 2025
Counsel For Petitioner: Satish R. Mody
Counsel For Respondent: Suresh Kumar
