The Kerala High Court confirmed the relegation to file appeal before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) as there was no violation of natural justice as notice regarding hearing issued to the Chartered Accountant (CA).
The Writ Petition was filed by the appellant challenging an order of the First Appellate Authority under the Income Tax Act. The ground in the Writ Petition in its challenge against the First Appellate Authority’s order was that the First Appellate Authority had not heard the appellant in the faceless proceedings that were adopted for the purposes of disposing the first appeal.
In particular, it was pointed out that while the appellant had indicated in the appeal form that communication was to be addressed to the address of the appellant, the First Appellate Authority had issued notice regarding the hearing of the appeal to the email address furnished therein being that of the Chartered Accountant of the appellant.
The Single Judge, therefore, found that there had been no violation of the principles of natural justice since the notice regarding the hearing of the appeal had already been issued to the Chartered Accountant at the email address furnished on behalf of the appellant. The Single Judge, relegated the appellant to the alternate remedy of preferring an appeal before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal for considering the challenge against the order of the First Appellate Authority.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Dr AK Jayasankaran Nambiar and Justice Kauser Edappagath observed that “On an overall consideration of the facts and circumstances of the case, we are of the view that the impugned judgment of the Single Judge that relegates the appellant to the alternate remedy of filing an appeal before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal need not be interfered with. At the same time, we find that the learned Single Judge had not protected the appellant against a possible demand arising consequent to the dismissal of the first appeal.”
“To safeguard the appellant in this regard, we deem it appropriate to modify the impugned judgment of the Single Judge to the limited extent of clarifying that pending disposal of the appeal by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, the recovery proceedings for recovery of any amount confirmed against the appellant by the First Appellate order shall be kept in abeyance. It is made clear that this order is conditional upon the appellant preferring the appeal before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, as directed by the learned Single Judge, within a period of one month from today” the Court concluded.
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