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2022 (12) TMI 1024 - HC - Income TaxValidity of assessment order - undue haste and failure to give adequate opportunity to the appellant to put forth its submission - HELD THAT:- As we find that the assessment had been completed by the officer with utmost haste without affording a reasonable opportunity for the appellant to put forth its contentions especially when the allegation was one of “mismatch”. The undisputed facts are that show cause notice was issued on 14th September, 2022 at 6.31 p.m. communicated to the appellant / assessee via email. The show cause notice is an elaborate show cause notice running to more than 18 pages. In the penultimate page, it has been stated that the appellant / assessee has to give his response through online mode by 17.29 hours on 19th September, 2022. At first blush, it appears that the appellant / assessee has five days time to respond but however, when we look at the calendar, we find that the time granted was only two days, as we have to exclude 14th September, 2022, the date of issuance of show cause notice and 17th September, 2022 and 18th September, 2022 have to be excluded as they are being Saturday and Sunday and especially on 17th September, 2022, it was an auspicious day where pujas were being celebrated through the State of West Bengal. This would be sufficient for us to set aside the assessment order on the ground of undue haste and failure to give adequate opportunity to the appellant to put forth its submission. The interim reply given by the appellant / assessee has been verbatim extracted in the order and the assessing officer states that the reply of the assessee is not found acceptable. In paragraph 4.5.3 of the assessment order, the assessing officer says that the show cause notice was served on 14th September, 2022 and five days were given to the assessee to submit its reply. As pointed out earlier, the assessee had not been given 5 days time and effectively, they had only 48 hours to submit its reply. With regard to the details regarding the GSTR-1 returns of the other parties is concerned, the assessing officer would state that the portal was kept open. There was nothing on record to indicate that the assessee was put on notice that the portal was kept open and it could do verification so as to reconcile any discrepancy. Thus, we are fully satisfied that there is total violation of principles of natural justice, which would be a good ground to interfere with the assessment order despite an appellate remedy existing over such an order. Appeal is allowed and the order passed in the writ petition is set aside.
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