Law:

Section:

Section 282 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 - Notice - Service of - Whether service of order on a personal acquiantance of one of partners of assessee-firm who is not connected with it, is valid - Held, no Section 256 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 - Reference - General principles - Whether without expressing its view on assessee's claim that delay in filing reference application was due to invalid service of order of Tribunal, it was justified in dismissing reference application only on ground that it had no power to condone delay beyond thirty days of prescribed period of limitation - Held, no FACTS The Tribunal disposed of the appeal on 22 4-1987. An application under section 256(1) which was to be filed within sixty days of the date of service of the order was, however, filed on 17-11-1987. Along with this application, the assessee-firm filed an application for condoning the delay. Its explanation was that the order dated 22-4-1987 was served upon J on 26-5-1987 and J was in no way connected or concerned with the assessee-firm - he was only a personal acquaintance of one of the partners. It was stated further that J handed over the said order to the assessee-firm on 18-9-1987. It was, therefore, prayed that the delay may be condoned. The Tribunal did not express any opinion on the above facts and dismissed the application on the only ground that it has no power to condone the delay beyond thirty days of the prescribed period of limitation. On writ: HELD What the petitioner claimed was true. It was a case where there was no delay at all. Further, if J was really not connected or concerned in any manner with the firm, service upon him was no service; service will be valid only when the said order was handed over to a partner of the firm. The mode of service upon a firm is set out in section 282(2)(c ). The petitioner was no doubt ill-advised in asking for condonation of delay on those facts but this defect in the prayer should not disentitle him to the relief which it was entitled to in law. The Tribunal had not expessed any opinion on the above facts though it had set out the said facts in its order. It had dismissed the application on the only ground that it had…

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