The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Pune bench, while dismissing a bunch of miscellaneous applications, held that the Income Tax Act, 1961 does not have any provisions allowing delay condonation of such applications under section 254 of the Act.
The Tribunal pronounced an order on 01.02.2013. The assessee should have filed the miscellaneous applications within a period of 4 years from 01.02.2013 i.e. on or before 01.02.2017. However, the assessee filed three miscellaneous applications which are time-barred since there was a delay of 2 years 11 months in filing these MAs.
It was contended on behalf of the assessee that the said order of Tribunal was not at all served on the assessee and they were also not aware that any order was passed by the Tribunal till 30.12.2019.
The Tribunal found that “the attitude of the assessee is always to avoid the authorities and more so, the assessee is not vigilant about his own cause. Thereafter, the assessee comes up with certain reasons for late filing of MAs but all these reasons are not supported by any evidence and the assessee was simply sleeping over the order of Tribunal for more than 2 years.”
While dismissing all the applications, the Tribunal held that “In view of the above examination of facts and law, we are of the considered opinion that this inordinate delay in filing of MAs is not a fit case for condonation, more so, because there is no specific provision in the realm of section 254(2) of the Act to provide for such condonation of delay in case of MAs. Therefore, all the condonation of delay petitions are dismissed. Since at the threshold itself the condonation of delay petitions are dismissed, MAs become academic and therefore, they are also dismissed.”
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