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2016 (5) TMI 1130 - AT - Income TaxReopening of assessment - addition u/s 68 - Held that:- prior to reopening of the assessment, the Assessing Officer has to apply his mind to the materials available to conclude that he has reasoned to believe that income of the assessee has escaped assessment. It has been further held that unless that basic jurisdictional requirement is satisfied, a postmortem exercise of analyzing material produced subsequent to the reopening will not rescue an inherently defective reopening order from invalidity. In the present case, the A.O. has not verified the information before banking upon it. We thus respectfully hold that the initiation of reopening proceedings was not valid in the present case in absence of application of mind on the part of the Assessing Officer. As discussed above, the Assessing Officer has initiated the reopening proceedings solely based upon the information received from the Investigation Wing of the Department that the assessee was one of the beneficiaries and two entries from the entry operator. The issue raised in the ground under consideration is thus decided in favour of the assessee with this finding that the Assessing Officer was not justified to acquire jurisdiction to initiate reopening proceedings and the action of the Assessing Officer in this regard was not valid. The assessment framed in furtherance to the said initiation of reopening proceedings is thus also held as void ab initio and is quashed as such. - Decided in favor of assessee
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