A division bench of Delhi High Court comprising Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora held that, Section 148 Notices sent as an attachment through emails, from the designated e-mail addresses of the JAOs, which do not bear the respective JAO’s Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) are valid.
Said notices were sent to the assessees via e-mail, with the Notice documents appended as an attachment, from the designated e-mail addresses of the respective JAOs. As per the Compliance Affidavit, the JAO has the option to (a) generate Notice + affix DSC later or (b) generate Notice without DSC.
The counsel for the respondents stated that either of the two options may have been chosen, the JAOs may have selected option (a) and did not affix DSC later which triggered the e-mail system software of the ITBA 15 days after the generation of notice and despatched the unsigned notice through email or (b) generated Notice without any DSC which ideally should have triggered the e-mail system software of the ITBA immediately. A notice will be considered authenticated if the name and office of the designated income-tax authority are printed, stamped, or otherwise written. It was also pleaded that the lack of DSC was merely a defect.
The petitioner’s counsel submitted Instruction No. 01/2018 dated 12.02.2018 and Notification No. 137/2021 – S.O. 5187(E) – dated 13.12.2021 titled ‘Section 143, Read with Sections 142 & 2(23C), of the Income Tax Act, 1961’- Assessment- Conduct of Assessment Proceedings in Scrutiny Cases Electronically’ and ‘e-Verification Scheme, 2021’ respectively for proving the mandatory nature of DSCs in notices.
However, the Bench observed that these circulars are not applicable to the notices issued and served u/s 148 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 and that the proviso to Section 282A and the amendments carried out to the said section by the Finance Act, 2016, therefore, gives recognition to the notices served in the e-form. Sub-section (2) of Section 282A provides that any notice issued by the such authority with his/her name and his/her office provided, as may or otherwise written thereon will be deemed to be authenticated and thus validly issued.
Additionally, the court examined the Rule 127A of the IT Rules which says– “(1) Every notice or other document communicated in electronic form by an income-tax authority under the Act shall be deemed to be authenticated,—
(a) in case of electronic mail or electronic mail message (hereinafter referred to as the e-mail), if the name and office of such income-tax authority.”
The Court, thus held that, “the affixation of DSC in notices issued under Section 148 of the Act of 1961 has not been made mandatory. As long as the requirements of Section 282A of the Act of 1961 and Rule 127A of the IT Rules are followed the notices would be considered to be authenticated.”
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