COURT: | Supreme Court |
CORAM: | Amitava Roy J, Pinaki Chandra Ghose J |
SECTION(S): | 195 CrPC |
GENRE: | Domestic Tax |
CATCH WORDS: | prosecution |
COUNSEL: | Sangeeta Kumar |
DATE: | August 31, 2016 (Date of pronouncement) |
DATE: | September 8, 2016 (Date of publication) |
AY: | - |
FILE: | Click here to view full post with file download link |
CITATION: | |
Prosecution: Important law relating to the territorial jurisdiction and competence of the Deputy Director of Income-tax to lodge a complaint for evasion of tax explained |
The Parliament has unmistakably designated the Deputy Commissioner (Appeals) to be the appellate forum from the orders as enumerated under Section 246(1) of the Act. This however, in our view, as observed hereinabove does not detract from the recognition of this authority to be the appellate forum before whom appeals from the decisions of an assessing officer or of an officer of the same rank thereto would generally and ordinarily lie even in the contingencies not referred to in particular in sub section 1 of Section 246. This is more so, to reiterate, in absence of any provision under the Act envisaging the Deputy Director of Income Tax to be an appellate forum in any eventuality beyond those contemplated in Section 246(1) of the Act. Neither the hierarchy of the income tax authorities as listed in Section 116 of the Act nor in the notification issued under Section 118 thereof, nor their duties, functions, jurisdictions as prescribed by the cognate provisions alluded heretobefore, permit a deduction that in the scheme of the legislation, the Deputy Director of Income Tax has been conceived also to be an appellate forum to which appeals from the orders/decisions of the I.T.Os./assessing officers would ordinarily lie within the meaning of Section 195(4) of the Code. The Deputy Director of Income Tax (Investigation)-I Bhopal, (M.P.), in our unhesitant opinion, therefore cannot be construed to be an authority to whom appeal would ordinarily lie from the decisions/orders of the I.T.Os. involved in the search proceedings in the case in hand so as to empower him to lodge the complaint in view of the restrictive preconditions imposed by Section 195 of the Code. The complaint filed by the Deputy Director of Income Tax, (Investigation)-I, Bhopal (M.P.), thus on an overall analysis of the facts of the case and the law involved has to be held as incompetent
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