The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Ahmedabad bench has held that the Commissioner (Appeals) shall condone the delay and dispose the appeal on merits if the assessee has not acted in a malafide manner in order avoid unnecessary burden to the assessee.
A bench of Shri Waseem Ahmed, Accountant Member and Shri Siddhartha Nautiyal, Judicial Member was considering an appeal by the assessee, Tejas Karshanbhai Dar wherein the assessee challenged the order of the first appellate authority rejecting the appeal only on the ground of delay of 49 days in filing the appeal without assigning any other reasons. The assessee explained that the reason for such delay was on account of lack of proper advice from his consultant.
Relying on a catena of decisions, the Tribunal observed that a liberal approach is required to be adopted on principle as ordinarily a litigant does not stand to benefit by lodging an appeal late.
“In our considered view, the Ld. CIT(A) has not approached the matter judiciously and has dismissed the appeal of the assessee, by rejecting the application for condonation of delay, without assigning any specific reasons why the delay in filing appeal should not be condoned. There is no allegation to the effect that the assessee acted in a mala-fide manner. Further, Ld. CIT (A) has not brought anything on record as to how the assessee would stand to gain by not filing the appeal in time,” the Tribunal said.
Granting relief to the assessee, the Tribunal held that “There is a minor delay of 43 days, for which, in our view, the assessee has given a plausible explanation. In the assessment framed on the assessee, Ld. Assessing Officer has made a huge addition of 33,00,000/- as undisclosed income in the hands of the assessee. The assessee, in our view, should not be precluded an opportunity of hearing merits, simply on account of a delay of mere 49 days in filing appeal. Even otherwise, as held by ITAT in the case of Kashmir Road Lines v. DCIT 2021] 123 taxmann.com 5 (Amritsar – Trib.), even when the assessee is not interest in pursuing the appeal, even then the Ld. CIT(A) should dispose of the appeal on merits. Therefore, in view of the above, the delay in filing the appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) is being condoned and the matter restored to the first appellate authority to decide the appeal on merit.”
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