The Ahmedabad bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) recently held that death of assessee shall not abate assessment proceedings as per Rule 26 of the Income Tax Rules, 1962.
Assessee Ishwarbhai Madhavlal Patel is a kartha of a Hindu Undivided Family. He filed an appeal against the order of the Commissioner of Income Tax passed under Section 250(6) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 for the Assessment Year 2014.
It was observed that none has appeared to argue the case on behalf of the assessee, right from the inception of appeal on 4th June, 2018 to till date with either adjournments were being sought on behalf of the assessee or nobody came present for the assessee on every occasion when the appeal was listed thereafter.
Due to the non appearance the appeal was decided by ex-parte after hearing the department.
The tribunal, while going through the applications filed on the previous occasions, observed that assessee, being an HUF, its Karta had passed away and the Counsel had no instruction as to how to proceed with the appeal thereafter.
Before the tribunal when the appeal was filed for hearing counsel for assessee filed the same application again and again.
It is evident that the assessee is not interested in pursuing its appeal by taking corrective measures as required under law on the passing away of the Karta of the HUF.
Further, the tribunal determined that As per Rule 26 of the Income-Tax Rules where an appellant-assessee dies or is adjudicated insolvent or in the case of a company is being wound-up,the appeal shall not abate and if the assessee being the appellant wants to continue with the appeal, he is required to file revised Form No.36 in the name of the legal-heirs or representative of the deceased-assessee.
According to the above analysis the bench of Annapurna Gupta, (Accountant Member) held that ”assessee is no longer interested in pursuing the appeal and in the absence of any corrective action taken, the appeal stands abated” therefore the appeal filed by the assessee was as abated and non-maintainable.
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