Saksham Commodities Limited Vs ITO (Delhi High Court)
The writ petition before the Delhi High Court challenged a notice dated 11 July 2022 issued under Section 153C of the Income-tax Act, 1961 for Assessment Year (AY) 2013-14, along with all consequential proceedings.
At the outset, the Court observed that the notice under Section 153C was dated 11 July 2022 and that AY 2013-14 fell beyond the maximum period of ten years prescribed under the Act. The Court held that the issue was already covered in favour of the petitioner by its earlier judgment in Principal Commissioner of Income Tax-1 v. Ojjus Medicare Pvt. Ltd.
Referring to the principles laid down in Ojjus Medicare, the Court reiterated that the First Proviso to Section 153C creates a legal fiction under which the commencement date for computing the six-year and ten-year block periods is deemed to be the date on which the books of account, documents, or assets seized are received by the jurisdictional Assessing Officer (AO) of the non-searched person, and not the date of search. The Court noted that this legal position already stood settled through earlier decisions of the Delhi High Court in SSP Aviation and RRJ Securities, as well as the Supreme Court decisions in Jasjit Singh and Vikram Sujitkumar Bhatia. Accordingly, it rejected the Revenue’s contention that the limitation period should be computed with reference to the date of search.
