In a recent ruling, a three-judge bench of the Delhi High Court held that the limitation period for filing appeal starts when any of the Departmental Officer receives the order in cases where the Revenue is the aggrieved party.
The Revenue lost a second appeal against the assessee and challenged the ITAT order before the High Court on appeal. The date of the order was shown as 29th October 2014 and the same was delivered to the office of the CIT, Ghaziabad on 19th December, 2014.
The Revenue claimed that due to administrative orders, the case of the assessee was transferred to Delhi-IV and on direction of the ITAT, the order was sent to the Office at Delhi-IV.As stated by the Revenue, it was only after receiving the certified copy on 28th April, the CIT took a decision to file an appeal.
In another case, the Revenue filed an appeal after 120 days. It was explained that the order was received by the CIT (Judicial) and the receipt of the copy by the CIT (Judicial) is not sufficient to trigger the limitation period under Section 260 A (2) (a) of the Act.
Rejecting the contentions of the revenue, the three judge bench comprising of Justice, S. Ravindra Bhat, Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Vibhu Bakhru clarified that in any matter arising from an order passed by the ITAT against the Department, an “aggrieved‟ person is the entire Department. “It is not any individual officer of the Department who can be said to be ‘aggrieved’. It would be factually and legally incorrect to state that only that AO, CIT or Pr CIT within whose jurisdiction the Assessee’s returns are scrutinised will be the aggrieved party and not any other officer of the Department. The CIT or the Pr CIT is a representative of the Department which is the party aggrieved.”
“In other words, there can be no doubt that in all cases where the decision of the ITAT has gone against the Revenue, it is the Revenue as a whole which is the ‘aggrieved party’. An individual CIT or Pr CIT can prefer the appeal on behalf of the Revenue as an aggrieved party. If the legislative intent was to confer the power to file an appeal only by the ‘concerned’ CIT or Pr CIT or Chief CIT, then words to that effect ought to have been used. The use of the prefix ‘the’ preceding the words CIT or Pr CIT in Section 260 A (2) (a) serves only the grammatical correctness of a preposition and nothing more. It is not to be read as meaning “that particular CIT” or the “concerned CIT”.”
The bench stated that Rule 34 of the ITAT Rules equally provides the statutory underpinning of the above principle. In the opinion of the Court, the fact that the jurisdictional CIT was not present at the time of pronouncement of the order of the ITAT will make no difference. “The first officer of the Department who receives the certified copy should be taken to have “received‟ it on behalf of all the officers of the Department. How such officer who first receives the copy ensures that it reaches the particular officer who has to take a decision on filing an appeal is for the Department to figure out. That internal issue of the Department cannot possibly extend the time for filing of the appeal beyond 120 days as provided under Section 260A (2) (a) of the Act.”
While concluding the matter in favour of the assessee, the bench added that “another context would be the absence of arbitrariness and discrimination in the manner of treatment of the parties to the litigation. Section 260 A (2) (a) applies to both, the Assessee as well as the Revenue. When it is the Assessee who is aggrieved, limitation for filing the appeal will begin to run once the Assessee through its AR receives a copy of the order of the ITAT. Where the AR is present at the pronouncement, or even when such AR chooses not to remain present for pronouncement, the Assessee should be taken to be aware of the order from that moment. From then on, barring the time taken by such AR to obtain a copy of the order, the limitation for filing an appeal would begin to run. Assuming that the Assessee is a large company, and a decision as to filing an appeal can only be taken by, say, its Managing Director (MD), an argument that the limitation does not begin till the order has reached the desk of the MD of that company will not be countenanced. Therefore, what applies to an Assessee should equally apply to the Revenue particularly since the legislature has not couched the language in a manner that brings out any difference in the treatment of both the parties to the appeal.”
Read the full text of the Judgment below.
