RKKR Foundation Vs National Faceless Assessment Centre Delhi (Delhi High Court)
According to us, what has emerged clearly is that, a request for accommodation was made by the petitioner on 27.04.2021, wherein a reference was made to the CBDT circular dated 24.04.2021, whereby, the limitation for passing the assessment order had been extended till 30.06.2021.
The AO, in our opinion, at that juncture, had two options;
(i) First, to decline the request for accommodation; which may, possibly, have been unreasonable, given the fact that the limitation had been extended till 30.06.2021.
(ii) Second, which was perhaps a more reasonable and equitable option, was to give, if not fifteen days, at least a little leeway to the petitioner to respond to the show cause notice dated 22.04.2021.
The submission of Mr. Rai that since a notice under Section 143(2) was issued followed by several notices under Section 142 (1) of the Act, and therefore, no further time was required to be granted by revenue to the petitioner, in our opinion, is a submission that is completely untenable.
The reason we say so, is that once Department issued a show cause notice-cum-draft assessment order calling upon the petitioner to file its objections qua the same, this argument cannot be taken on behalf of respondent no. 1 in view of the fact that the impugned show cause notice-cum-draft assessment order dated 22.04.2021 has brought about a variation in the returned income of the petitioner.
