The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Chennai bench has condoned the delay of 229 days in filing the first appeal by observing that the delay was due to cancer treatment of the assessee.
The appellant is an individual, deriving income under the head ‘’income from salaries”. During the relevant period. the Assessing Officer disallowed the claim of exemption of House Rent Allowance (HRA) by finding that the assessee had not filed any evidence in support of the claim. Further, the Officer initiated penalty proceedings under section 271 (1) (c) of the Act should not be made for furnishing inaccurate particulars of income resulting in disallowances of the claim of exemption under section 10(13A) of the Act.
Against the order of penalty, the assessee filed an appeal with a delay of Two Hundred and Twenty Nine days. Though the assessee has filed an affidavit praying for condoning of delay on the ground that he was undergoing treatment for cancer in Apollo Hospital, Vanagaram, till December 2018, the appellate authority rejected the same and dismissed the appeal.
The Tribunal observed that “the assessee was diagnosed with Cancer in December 2017 and the ld. CIT(A) passed the order on 20.03.2018, which is subsequent to the diagnosis of the illness, needless to mention that treatment of cancer is very painful and it is not possible to focus on other issues when he was under the treatment and therefore in our opinion, there is a reasonable cause for not filing the appeal within the due period and therefore we are of the considered opinion that it is a fit case to condone the delay and accordingly we condone the delay and admit the appeal for adjudication.”
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