On writ \u00a0\u00a0the question raised by the petitioner is , whether the failure to pass a draft assessment order before passing the final assessment order invalidated the final assessment order under section\u00a0143(3)\u00a0read with section\u00a0263\u00a0and the subsequent demand notice under section\u00a0156\u00a0and penalty proceedings under section\u00a0270A.\u00a0 Allowing the petition the Court held that\u00a0 \u00a0the Assessing Officer\u2019s omission to pass a draft assessment order under section\u00a0144C\u00a0was not merely a procedural oversight, but a substantive lapse, which rendered the final assessment order, the demand notice under section\u00a0156\u00a0and the penalty proceedings under section\u00a0270A\u00a0devoid of jurisdiction. While the Commissioner exercised the revision powers under section\u00a0263\u00a0, his action was primarily rooted in the belief that the original assessment order was erroneous and potentially detrimental to the Revenue\u2019s interests. However, on remand, the Assessing Officer had passed the order in question revising the assessee\u2019s income, and increased its tax liability. Therefore, the order was clearly prejudicial to the interest of the assessee. A draft assessment order should have been made available to the assessee. Failure to pass a draft assessment order had effectively denied the assessee an opportunity to seek adjudication before the Dispute Resolution Panel under section\u00a0144C(1)\u00a0in respect of the allegations in the order. Although this order was passed in remand proceedings to give effect to the directions of the Commissioner, issued under section\u00a0263\u00a0, yet it qualified as a fresh assessment order within the ambit of section\u00a0143(3)\u00a0. Given this characterization, it was incumbent upon the Assessing Officer, not just as a matter of procedure, but also as a matter of law, to adhere to the special provisions delineated in section\u00a0144C(1)\u00a0(AY.2006-07)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 144C : Reference to dispute resolution panel -Eligible assessee \u2014 Draft assessment order \u2014 Mandatory \u2014 Even when assessment order is issued in conformity with directions from higher authority \u2014 Failure to pass draft assessment order \u2014Final order unlawful \u2014 Demand notice and penalty proceedings invalid [ S. 143(3) 156 , 263 , 270A , Art. 226 ] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-b6B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42694,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42693\/revisions\/42694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}