Law:

Section:

Section 148 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 - Income escaping assessment - Issue of notice for - Assessment year 1986-87 - Whether where neither any reason specified in section 148 which led to issuance of notice was communicated nor any averment was made nor material was placed on record to dispute assessee's claim that there was no omission or failure on part of assessee to make return or to disclose fully and truly all material facts necessary for his assessment, none of mandatory requirements as envisaged under section 148 was satisfied - Held, yes - Whether, as a result, notice issued for reassessment was to be quashed - Held, yes FACTS The ITO issued notice under section 148 on the ground that he had reason to believe that the petitioner-assessee's income in the status of BOI, which was chargeable to tax for the relevant assessment year, had escaped assessment within the meaning of section 147. He, therefore, proposed to reassess the assessee's income for the said assessment year. The assessee called upon the ITO to disclose the reasons, if any, recorded by him before issuing the said notice. The ITO did not communicate the reasons. The writ petition filed by the assessee was dismissed in limine. On appeal, the Supreme Court specifically directed that the writ should be decided expeditiously. On being noticed, the revenue appeared and filed their affidavit in reply, making a bald averment therein to the effect that specific reasons for adopting the status of BOI as against an AOP were recorded in the order sheet. However, no copy of the order sheet had been produced along with the affidavit in reply. No reason for issuing notice under section 148 was found in the counter-affidavit. No copy of the reasons alleged to have been recorded was produced on record, in spite of specific assertion made in the petition that no reasons existed, and/or no reasons were recorded before directing notice under section 148. Apart from the stray averments in the affidavit in reply, no other material had been placed on record in support of the notice under section 148. HELD The law is well-settled on the point that if existence of the conditions precedent for the issuance of…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492