Held that the Transfer Pricing Officer had passed the order under section 92CA of the Act read with section 263 of the Act on January 24, 2020. The assessment order under section 143(3) read with section 92CA(3) considering the direction of the Principal Commissioner should have been passed on or before December 30, 2020, in terms of the provisions of section 153(3) of the Act. Subsequently, time-limits were extended by the decision of the Supreme Court in Cognizance for Extension of Limitation, In re [2022 441 ITR 722 (SC); [2022 230 Comp Cas 423 (SC) till February 28, 2022 and further a period of 90 days was available. According to that direction and various notifications a period of 9.5 months was further added to the time-limit available from March 1, 2022 and therefore, any order under section 143(3) read with sections 263 and 153 of the Act should have been passed on or before December 15, 2022, i. e., outer time-limit for the Assessing Officer to pass order. The assessee submitted that no final assessment order had been passed by the Assessing Officer till date. Therefore, apparently time-limit for passing assessment order pursuant to the direction of the Principal Commissioner had already expired.

Held also, that if it was found later that the Assessing Officer had passed the assessment order pursuant to the order under section 263 of the Act within the time-limit allowed, the assessee was given a liberty to make an application for recall of this order.(AY.2013-14)