| Question And Answer | |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Notice / order signed with expired digital signature |
| Category: | Income-Tax |
| Querist: | PARAS CHHAJED |
| Answered by: | Advocate Shashi Ashok Bekal |
| Tags: | expired digital signature, Notice, signed |
| Date: | April 30, 2022 |
Is any notice or assessment order digitally signed using an expired digital signature of assessing officer valid in law ? Is there any specific provision under the Information Technology Act, 2000 or any other law with respect to use of digital signature on any document / notice / order? Whether the provisions of section 282A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 would come to rescue of the assessing officer who has signed the notice / order with expired digital signature ? Kindly guide.
A Notice signed with an expired digital signature should be construed as unsigned. As per Section 282A (2) of the Act, every notice or other document to be issued, served or given for the purposes of this Act by any income-tax authority, shall be deemed to be authenticated if the name and office of a designated income-tax authority is printed, stamped or otherwise written thereon. Therefore, going by the section, the defect can be cured by this deeming provision.
The lawmakers anticipated in advance that the officers are very much likely to commit such defaults, therefore they have already brought in provisions to take up such situations. This type of errors show that how much competent the officers are. They work for making high-pitched assessments, closing the submissions before the appointed time in the show cause notice, not considering the submissions of the assessees, putting wrong figures of income in tax computation sheet, not allowing video conferencing or if allowed not interested to hear the arguments, asking funny queries like asking to submit registration certificates u/s 12AA and 80G from co-operative societies, making additions u/s 68 in case of trusts in respect of donations received in cash which are already shown as income, so on and so forth.
Further, is the person who is digitally signing the notices / orders etc. supposed to read the contents of the documents which are being signed in his name ?
It is understood that all the notices and orders issued by NFAC were signed by one Shri Vishesh Prakash only.