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2019 (5) TMI 782 - HC - Income TaxTransfer of case u/s 127 (2)(a) - Currently, the jurisdiction is with the Dy. CIT, Circle - 3 (2), Hyderabad - centralization of the petitioner’s case at Mumbai - assessee objected to the proposed centralization but objections were overruled by the Pr. CIT, Hyderabad - non furnishing of reasons - coordinated and effective investigation - company have registered office at Pune and Corporate Office at Hyderabad - HELD THAT:- If the petitioner was really aggrieved by a one-line show-cause notice which did not indicate any reasons for the proposal; the petitioner could have given a one-line reply demanding the reasons to be furnished. If the Department had failed to furnish reasons even thereafter, but proceeded to pass orders, then the same would have been a clear violation of the procedure prescribed u/s 127 (2)(a). But, in this case, the petitioner understood the reasons and countered those reasons in their response. Therefore, it is no more open to the petitioner to cite the lack of reasons in the show-cause notice as a ground for assailing the impugned order. In fact, our experience shows that different jurisdictional authorities, different benches of the Tribunal and even different High Courts take different views on certain complicated issues. Therefore, when multiple parties located at different places coming under different jurisdictional Officers are involved in an investigation, there is nothing wrong in the competitive authority taking a decision to centralize the assessment of all the parties. In a nutshell, this is described as “coordinated and effective investigation” and hence the allegation that the same is a bald and vague statement, cannot be accepted. An Assessee who faces no hardship in shifting their registered office to another State just for the purpose of bagging contracts in that State also, cannot plead that the centralization and transfer for the purpose of coordinated and effective investigation would cause hardship to them. If huge infrastructure projects can be undertaken by the petitioner in various States without causing financial, managerial and logistic stress, they cannot plead stress in so far as the centralization and transfer of assessment alone. As we have indicated earlier, the respondents have not taken any decision arbitrarily to transfer the investigation to Mumbai. The decision is a fall out of a search conducted in the Offices of ABIL Group of entities and their Promoters. It may be true that the percentage of the work sub-contracted by the petitioner to ABIL Group of entities may be abysmally low. But the magnitude of the projects undertaken by the petitioner are so huge that even the small percentage sub-contracted to ABIL, with an obligation on their part to entrust the work to one of the partnership firms promoted by the promoters of the petitioner company runs into several Crores. Therefore, we do not think that the respondents can be accused of acting arbitrarily. Once it is found that the respondents have followed the procedure prescribed by law and once it is found that there was no arbitrariness, it may not be possible for us to interfere with the decision, in cases of this nature. Therefore, the Writ Petition is liable to be dismissed
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