The Division Bench of Kerala High Court has stayed recovery proceedings under income tax until the disposal of stay application and appeal by the appellate authority.
Against assessment order for the assessment years 2015- 2016 under the Income Tax Act, the appellant, Kunnappilly Builders had preferred appeal and application for stay of recovery pending disposal of the appeal. When recovery steps were initiated by the respondents during the pendency of the statutory appeal and stay application, the appellant approached the writ court which was disposed by a Single Judge by judgement dated 17.10.2023 relegating the appellant to the alternate remedy of appeal and directing the Appellate Authority to dispose the stay application or the appeal within a period of two months.
The appellant impugned the said judgement of the Single Judge solely on the ground that while disposing the Writ Petition, the Single Judge did not grant a stay of recovery proceedings till such time as the First Appellate Authority considered the stay application/appeal as directed by the Single Judge.
Anil D. Nair, appeared on behalf of the appellant and Jose Joseph, appeared on behalf of the revenue.
The Division Bench of Justice A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar and Justice Kauser Edappagath observed that it was incumbent upon the Judge to protect the appellant from recovery proceedings pending disposal of the application by the respondent appellate authority.
Accordingly, the Bench modified the impugned judgement of the Single Judge to the limited extent of clarifying that pending disposal of the stay application or appeal whichever was earlier, by the appellate authority, the recovery proceedings against the appellant for recovery of the amounts confirmed against him by assessment order should be kept in abeyance. Save for this limited modification, the rest of the directions in the impugned judgement were not interfered with.
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