Law: Income Tax Act, 1961

Section: 127

Income-tax----Transfer of case---Condition precedent---Opportunity to be heard--­Opportunity to be heard will not be effective unless reasons for transfer are given in notice under S.127---Reply to notice which does not give reasons would not amount to waiver or estoppel against right to have reasonable opportunity to be heard---Indian Income Tax Act, 1961, S. 127 Section \127 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, specifically. provides that the Director-General or Chief Commissioner or Commissioner may after giving the assessee a reasonable, opportunity of being heard in the matter wherever it is possible to do so and after recording his reasons for doing so, transfer any case from one Assessing Officer to any other Assessing Officer. When the section requires giving of a reasonable opportunity of hearing to an assessee before passing an order of transfer, the same would obviously mean that the assessee will be entitled to make his objection or representation against the proposed order of transfer and such representation and objection cannot be an effective one unless it is known to him for what reason or on what grounds such proposal is being made. If such reason for proposal of such transfer is not indicated in the show-cause notice, the opportunity of the petitioner to represent against such, proposal will be entirely an illusory and not effective one. A reply to the notice under section 127 without giving reasons would not amount to either waiver of or estoppel, against provisions of reasonable opportunity of hearing, the same being mandatory: Held, that, admittedly, in the instant cases, in the show-cause notice the grounds or reason for proposed transfer was not indicated. Hence, the entire proceedings were vitiated and were liable to be set aside. Ajantha Industries v. CBDT (1976) 102ITR 281 (SC); Pannalal Binjraj v. Union of India (1957) 31 ITR 565 (SC); Saptagiri Enterprises v. CIT (1991) 189 ITR 705 (AP) and Vijayasanthi Investments (Pvt.) Ltd. v. Chief CIT (1991) 187 ITR 405 (AP) ref. JUDGMENT The present writ applications have been heard analogously with Items Nos. (3) to (9) as appearing under the heading "for order", common question of law and fact being…

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