Case Law Details
Hitesh Ashok Vaswani Vs DCIT (ITAT Ahmedabad)
The power to reopen a completed assessment under Section 147 of the Act has been bestowed on the Assessing Officer, if he has reason to believe that any income chargeable to tax has escaped assessment for any assessment year. However, this belief that income has escaped assessment has to be the reasonable belief of the Assessing Officer himself and cannot be an opinion and/or belief of some other authority. On the basis of the information by itself received from another agency, there cannot be any reassessment proceedings. However, after considering the information/material received from other source, the Assessing Officer is required to consider the material on record in case of the assessee by applying his mind and thereafter is required to form an independent opinion on the basis of the material on record that the information has bearing on the income of the assessee and such income has escaped assessment. Without forming such an opinion, solely and mechanically relying upon the information received from other source, there cannot be any reassessment. It is also established principle of law that if a particular authority has been designated to record his/her satisfaction on any particular issue, then it is that authority alone who should apply his/her independent mind to record his/her satisfaction and further mandatory condition is that the satisfaction recorded should be ‘independent’ and not ‘borrowed’ or ‘dictated’ satisfaction. Law in this regard is now well-settled.
The Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of Anirudh Sinhji Karan Sinhji Jadeja v. State of Gujarat reported in [1995] 5 SCC 302 as well has held that if a statutory authority has been vested with jurisdiction, he has to exercise it according to its own discretion. If discretion is exercised under the direction or in compliance with some higher authorities instruction, then it will be a case of failure to exercise discretion altogether. The cases reopened on the basis of information received from the other Departments are also governed by the aforesaid principle of making an independent inquiry and recording of satisfaction by the Assessing Officer issuing notice under Section 148 of the Act.
Third party information is only an information and does not constitute ‘reason to believe’ until and unless the third party information is subjected to investigation and on the basis thereof independent reasons are recorded by the Assessing Officer before issuance of notice under Section 148 of the Act.
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