Allowing the petition the Court held that\u00a0\u00a0 the issuance of the notice under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0after conducting of the search operation under section\u00a0132\u00a0was illegal and without jurisdiction and contrary to the provision which was very clear and there was no ambiguity. Even if there was an ambiguity the benefit of it must go the assessee. The Legislature having clearly laid down the manner in which the notice under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0was to be issued, it had to be mandatorily followed. Any manner other than what was provided in the provision was necessarily forbidden. There could not have been any material that could be a reason to suspect that any income had been concealed or likely to be concealed by the assessee. Held that since the Principal Director (Investigation) and the Deputy Director (Investigation) had stated that the search and seizure action under section\u00a0132\u00a0was conducted on the basis of the authorisation issued by the Principal Director (Investigation), Guwahati and that during the post search investigation, the Deputy Director (Investigation), Dibrugarh had issued the notices under section\u00a0131(1A), it was evident that the search operation under section\u00a0132\u00a0had been carried out without issuance of notice under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0but merely on the basis of the authorization. Therefore, the search conducted under section\u00a0132\u00a0and the subsequent notices under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0were illegal and without jurisdiction. \u00a0That the Department had not placed any materials whatsoever to indicate that the assessing authority had any materials on the basis of which he had reasons to suspect that the assessee had concealed or was likely to conceal any income. The very fact that the Department had issued notices under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0after the search and seizure operation under section\u00a0132\u00a0was conducted, showed that there was neither any reasons to suspect nor materials before the Assessing Officer on the basis of which search operation could have been conducted under section\u00a0132. Hence, the two essential conditions being absent before the search was conducted, it was without jurisdiction. The authorization issued for the search, the consequent search and seizure under section\u00a0132\u00a0and the notices issued under section\u00a0131(1A)\u00a0were quashed and set aside. Taxing statutes are to be interpreted strictly and the assessee cannot be taxed by inference or by analogy. In case of any ambiguity in the taxing provision, the benefit of it should go to the taxpayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 132 : Search and seizure-Reason to believe must exist at time of issue of warrant of authorisation for search-Department must give specific details to justify search-Merely on basis of warrant of authorisation-Search and seizure invalid-Survey-Notice of survey issued pursuant to search is not valid-Interpretation Of Taxing Statutes-Strict constructions.[S. 131(IA), 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-47432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-cl2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47432","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=47432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47675,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47432\/revisions\/47675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}