The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Chennai ruled that Mere technical lapse should not come in way of taxpayers seeking justice.
The Counsel for the Respondent, V Sreenivasan, pleaded for dismissal of the appeal and drew attention to the fact that the appeal has been dismissed by CIT(A) on technical grounds since the appeal was not filed by a legal heir as representative assessee as stipulated by statutory provisions. During the pendency of appellate proceedings, the assessee expired and the appeal was filed by the legal heir of the assessee. The CIT(A) noted that in Form 35 the name of the legal heir i.e., Karuppiah Sekar, and his PAN ABHPS4050C was mentioned and therefore, the appeal was not maintainable and liable to be dismissed. The Ld. AR submitted that the manual appeal was correctly filed in the name of the deceased assessee.
The CIT(A) held that “once the person registers himself as representative of the deceased then the person has to select in the online portal that the appeal was filed as representative of the deceased assessee”. However, in the present case, the appeal was filed in the name of K. Sekar along with his individual PAN. The prescribed procedure was not followed. Further, the manual appeal filed in the name of S. Vinod Kumar was held to be invalid in view of notification No. SO.637(E) No. 11/2016 dated 01.03.2016 read with Rule 45 of the IT Rules which mandate electronic filing of the appeal. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed on technical grounds. Aggrieved the assessee is in appeal before the Tribunal.
The bench consisting of V Durga Rao, Judicial Member, and Manoj Kumar Aggarwal, Accountant Member held that “the principle of natural justice demands that reasonable opportunity should have been provided by CIT(A) to the legal heir to rectify the defects. The electronic appeal, as well as the manual appeal, has been filed by the legal heir within the stipulated time and there is no fault. Mere technical lapses should not come in the way of taxpayers seeking justice.”
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