Vinod Kumar Maheshwari Vs DCIT (ITAT Delhi)
The Delhi ITAT allowed nine appeals filed by Shri Vinod Kumar Maheshwari and Shri Krishan Kumar Maheshwari against orders of the CIT(A), New Delhi, concerning proceedings under Section 153C read with Section 143(3) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The proceedings arose from a Section 132 search conducted on 18.10.2019 in the Alankit Group and related cases.
In Shri Vinod Kumar Maheshwari’s seven appeals for AYs 2013-14 to 2019-20, the principal issue concerned the validity of the Section 153C assessments for want of a valid satisfaction. The Assessing Officer of the searched person had recorded satisfaction on 10.03.2022 stating that the seized documents belonged to a person other than the searched person. The Tribunal noted that, following the amendment to Section 153C(1)(a) by the Finance Act, 2015, effective from 01.06.2015, the expression “belongs to” applied to specified seized or requisitioned material such as money, bullion, jewellery or other valuable articles or things, whereas documents or books of account were covered through the expressions “pertaining to” or “relating to” under Section 153C(1)(b).
The Revenue argued that recording satisfaction was procedural and that “belonging”, “pertaining” and “relating” could be treated as interchangeable. The Tribunal rejected this contention, relying on the third member decision in Prashant P. Bafna vs. ACIT and the principle of strict interpretation of taxing statutes stated in Commissioner vs Dilip Kumar (2018) 9 SCC 1 (SC) (FB). It accordingly quashed all seven assessments as non-est.
