IDA MARY PINTO,MUMBAI vs. INCOME TAX OFFICER 22(1)(6), PIRAMAL CHAMBER
IN THE INCOME-TAX APPELLATE TRIBUNAL “C” BENCH,
MUMBAI
BEFORE SHRI SANDEEP GOSAIN, JUDICIAL MEMBER
&
SHRI PRABHASH SHANKAR, ACCOUNTANT MEMBER
Ida Mary Pinto, 669, Laxmi
Sadan, Dr. M.B. Raut Road,
Shivaji
Park,
Dadar
West,
Mumbai–400028, Maharashtra v/s.
बनाम
Income
Tax
Officer
–
22(1)(6), Piramal Chamber,
Lalbaug, Mumbai –400017,
Maharashtra
स्थायी लेखा सं./जीआइआर सं./PAN/GIR No: APGPP7159E
Appellant/अपीलार्थी
..
Respondent/प्रतिवादी
Appellant by :
Shri Anil Sathe & Shri Prashant Chapekar
Respondent by :
Mr. Virabhadra S. Mahajan, (Sr. DR)
Date of Hearing
10.07.2025
Date of Pronouncement
21.07.2025
आदेश / O R D E R
PER PRABHASH SHANKAR [A.M.] :-
The present appeal arising from the appellate order dated
16.05.2023 is filed by the assessee against the order passed by the Learned Commissioner of Income-tax (Appeals)/National Faceless
Appeal Centre, Delhi [hereinafter referred to as “CIT(A)”] pertaining to assessment order passed u/s. 143(3) r.w.s. 147 of the Income-tax Act,
1961 [hereinafter referred to as “Act”] dated 10.03.2016 as passed by the Income Tax Officer, Ward-21(1)(5), Mumbai for the Assessment Year
[A.Y.] 2010-11. P a g e | 2
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto
The grounds of appeal are as under: 1. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in dismissing the appeal by treating the appeal filed manually as invalid. 2. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in disregarding the fact that the appeal filed manually was heard by the erstwhile Commissioner of Appeal in the year 2019 though the appeal was filed manually. 3. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in disregarding the fact that in the proceedings before him the appellant was not directed to file the appeal electronically and that the appellant was always under belief that the appeal filed by her was a valid appeal and since matter had been remanded to the assessing officer, the appeal was being adjudicated. 4. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in treating the appeal as invalid without giving sufficient opportunity to the appellant to rectify the defects. 5. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in dismissing the appeal without appreciating the fact that the appeal remained pending due to non-furnishing of the remand report by the concerned officer despite the appellant having made the full submission in the remand proceedings. 6. The learned Commissioner of Income Tax Appeals erred in fact and in law in deciding the appeal only on the technical lapses of the appellant without appreciating the merits of the matter.
At the outset, it may be stated that as per Registry, the instant appeal is delayed by 640 days. In this regard, a condonation application has been submitted alongwith affidavit submitting that the assessee aged 75 years, is staying alone since her husband passed away in 1998.The order of the ld. CIT(A) was served on 16th May 2023. The appeal was due for filing on or before 15th July 2023. Therefore, there is delay of 640 days in filing of the appeal. She is a housewife without any source of regular income and is being looked after by her daughter.
P a g e | 3
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto
Since she did not have any regular/taxable income, returns had not been filed for years. She did not have any email id and the registered email was that of her previous consultant and now with her daughter on the advice of the current consultants. On account of facts these facts notice/orders pertaining to Income tax proceedings went unnoticed by her. As she was not been filing my returns, she was not in contact with her previous consultants. It was only recently when her daughter whose number is a registered contact number on Income Tax Portal, received a call from Department regarding outstanding tax demand for the year under consideration, she contacted the current consultants and filed the appeal. It is pleaded that the delay in filing an appeal is on account of various factors explained hereinbefore and not with a malafide intention which may be condoned.
3.1 On careful consideration of the submissions of the assessee, we are of the considered opinion that the delay in filing of the present appeal was not intentional but due to certain miscommunication only.
Such a bonafide mistake needs to be condoned. In this connection reliance could be placed on the landmark decision of hon’ble Supreme
Court which inter alia held in Collector, Land Acquisition v Mst.
Katiji And Others- 167 ITR 471 (SC) that “ordinarily, a litigant
P a g e | 4
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto does not stand to benefit by lodging an appeal late……..Refusing to condone delay can result in a meritorious matter being thrown out at the very threshold and cause of justice being defeated….Any appeal or any application, other than an application under any of the provisions of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, may be admitted after the prescribed period if the appellant or the applicant satisfies the court that he had sufficient cause for not preferring the appeal or making the application within such period…. A litigant does not stand to benefit by resorting to delay. In fact, he runs serious risk.” We therefore, condone the delay.
4. According to the appellate order, it was noticed from Form 35, that the appellant filed an appeal in paper form manually on 15.04.2016, which according to him was not valid as per Circular No. 20/2016 issued by the Central Board of Direct taxes, New Delhi in F.NO. 279/Misc./M-
54/2016/ITJ, dated 26.05.2016. As per this circular, Rule 45 of the Income Tax rules, 1961, mandates compulsory e-filing of appeal before the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) with effect from 01.03.2016. However, in her case, the appellant filed manual appeal only. After issuing a show cause notice, he treated the manual appeal invalid.
P a g e | 5
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto
Accordingly, all the grounds of appeal as also the appeal were treated as dismissed.
5. Before us, the ld.AR has made a detailed submission stating the reasons for filing of appeal manually. It is submitted that consequent to passing of assessment order, the assessee filed manual appeal on 15.04.2016 before CIT(A)-33,Mumbai.She also complied with notices issued. The ld.CIT(A) on 28.02.2019 called for a remand report from the AO based on her submissions. During remand proceedings detailed submissions were also made. However, due to intervening Covid epidemic period, remand report was not submitted by the AO and appeal proceedings were on hold. Meanwhile, her case was migrated to Faceless Appeal scheme. Subsequently, she was show caused for treating the manual appeal as invalid and went ahead to treat the appeal invalid against which present appeal has been filed before this Bench. The ld.DR has supported the appellate order.
6. We have carefully considered the above facts and find that the ld.CIT(A) has on the basis of Circular treated the appeal invalid without considering the fact that the manual appeal, apparently filed within the time prescribed was already been taken cognizance of by the predecessor and even her submissions were duly taken into consideration and forwarded to the AO calling for remand report. It appears that the P a g e | 6
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto assessee was not aware of the new scheme of Faceless appeal. We have observed that that newly introduced system of e-filing of appeals before
CIT(A) was introduced w.e.f. 01.03.2016 vide Rule 45 of the Income Tax
Rules,1962 while assessee filed appeal with CIT(A) on 15.04.2016. Thus, it can be seen that it was an initial period of introduction of new system of filing of appeal electronically. However, the assessee filed original appeal in time u/s 249(2) of the Act but the same was filed manually. In our considered view that tax-payers are bound to follow procedures prescribed by authorities in fulfilling their obligations under the Act. But at the same time procedures are meant to advance justice and not to stifle the same. The ld.CIT(A) dismissed her appeal and did not decide any issue raised by her on merits. Under these facts and circumstances of the case, we are of the considered view that liberal approach is required to be taken to advance justice. When technicalities are pitted against justice, the courts will lean towards advancement of justice. In this regard, it may be relevant to refer to the Hon'ble Supreme Court, in the case of Dilip Kumar (2018) 9 SCC , wherein while deciding the Doctrine of Substantial Compliance held as under:
“33. A fiscal statute generally seeks to preserve the need to comply strictly with regulatory requirements that are important, especially when a party seeks the benefits of an exemption clause that are important. Substantial compliance with an enactment is insisted, where mandatory and directory requirements are lumped together, for in such a case, if mandatory
P a g e | 7
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto requirements are complied with, it will be proper to say that the enactment has been substantially complied with notwithstanding the non-compliance of directory requirements. In cases where substantial compliance has been found, there has been actual compliance with the statute, albeit procedurally faulty. The doctrine of substantial compliance seeks to preserve the need to comply strictly with the conditions or requirements that are important to invoke a tax or duty exemption and to forgive non-compliance for either unimportant and tangential requirements or requirements that are so confusingly or incorrectly written that an earnest effort at compliance should be accepted.”
6.1 We find that similar issue has been deliberated in various decisions of the coordinate bench of ITAT, Mumbai and decided in favour of the appellants. In the case of All India Federation Of Tax ... vs Income Tax Officer (E) 1(2), Mumbai on 4
May, 2018 in ITA No.7134/Mum/2017, the issue came up for consideration. Relevant operative parts of the order are extracted below:
“6. We have heard the counsels for both the parties and we have also perused the material placed on record as well as orders passed by the revenue authorities. From the records we noticed that electronically filing of the appeals was introduced for the first time vide rule 45 of I.T. Rules 1962, mandating compulsory e-filing of appeals before appellate Commissioner with effect from 1st March 2016. We noticed that in this respect, there is no corresponding amendment in any of the provisions of the substantive law i.e I.T. Act, 1961.As per the facts of the present case, the assessment in the above case was completed u/s 143(3) of the I.T. Act 1961. However the assessee has filed appeal before Ld. CIT(A) in paper form as prescribed under the provisions of I.T. Act 1961 within the prescribed period of limitation. But the same was dismissed by Ld. CIT(A) by holding that assessee had not filed appeal through electronic form, which is mandatory as per I.T. Rules 1962. After having considered the entire factual position, we find that Hon'ble Supreme
Court in the case of 'State of Punjab Vs.Shyamalal Murari and others reported in AIR 1976 (SC) 1177 has categorically held that courts should not go strictly by the rulebook to deny justice to the deserving litigant as it would lead to miscarriage of justice. It has been reiterated by the Hon'ble Supreme Court that all the rules of P a g e | 8
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto procedure are handmaid of Justice. The language employed by the draftsman of procedural law may be liberal or stringent, but the fact remains that the object of prescribing procedure is to advance the cause of Justice. The Hon'ble Apex Court has said in an 'adversarial' system, no party should ordinarily be denied the opportunity of participating in the process of Justice dispensation.
The Hon'ble Supreme Court in its judgement reported as AIR 2005 (SC) 3304 in the case of 'Rani KusumVrs. Kanchan Devi,' reiterated that, a procedural law should not ordinarily be construed as mandatory, as it is always subservient to and is in aid of Justice. Any interpretation, which eludes or frustrates the recipient of Justice, is not to be followed.
From the facts of the present case, we gathered that the assessee had already filed the appeal in paper form, however only the e-filing of appeal has not been done by the assessee and according to us, the same is only a technical consideration. In this respect, we rely upon the judgement of Hon'ble Supreme Court, wherein the Hon'ble
Supreme Court has reiterated that if in a given circumstances, the technical consideration and substantial Justice are pitted against each other, then in that eventuality the cause of substantial Justice deserves to be preferred and cannot be overshadowed or negatived by such technical considerations.
Apart from above we have also noticed that the Coordinate Bench of Hon'ble ITAT
Delhi Bench in appeal Vrs. ITO had restored the matter to the file of Ld. CIT(a) under identical circumstances with a direction do decide appeal afresh on merit, after condoning the delay, if any.
Since in the present case, we find that appeal in the paper form was already with Ld.
CIT(A), therefore in that eventuality the Ld. CIT(A) ought not to have dismissed the appeal solely on the ground that the assessee has not filed the appeal electronically before the appellate Commissioner.
Keeping in view the facts and circumstances as well as the case laws discussed and relied upon above, we are of the considered view that the cause of Justice would be served in case, we set aside the orders of Ld. CIT(A) & allow the present appeal.
While seeking the compliance, we direct the assessee to file the appeal electronically within 10 days from the date of receipt of this order. In case, the directions are followed then in that eventuality, the delay in e-filing the appeal shall stand condoned.
Ld. CIT(A) is further directed to consider the appeal filed by the assessee on merits by passing a speaking order. Resultantly, we allow the appeal filed by the assessee.
7. In the net result the appeal filed by the assessee is allowed.”
P a g e | 9
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto
2 In the case of Estate of Ramniklal Rajmal Mehta vs DCIT in ITA Nos.628 to 632/Mum/2021 it was held as under: "15. From the perusal of the assessment order and the submission made before us. It is abundantly clear that the appeal was filed in physical form, though was required to be filed in electronic form before the appellant authority. Needful was not done and sufficient reasons were given before us for not preferring the appeal in electronic form by the estate of Shri Ramniklal R. Mehta. 16. In our opinion, the Board framed the rules to achieve the ends of Justice and not to put impediments in the path of Justice. The assessee can not be asked to manage the portal of the revenue and forcibly file the appeal electronically. In our view, the assessee made sufficient and sincere efforts to file the appeal in electronic forms, albeit the assessee failed in his efforts for the reasons recorded in the order. In our considered opinion, the non filing of the electronic appeal was on account of the inaccessibility of the Income tax portal to the estate of Shri Ramniklal R.Mehta and assessee was forced to file the appeal in physical form . The assessee had preferred the appeal in electronic form on 12/03/2021 against the same assessment order dated 28/12/2018. In our view the revenue can not take the benefit of non functioning/ malfunctioning of its portal and deny the statutory right of the assesse. In any case the assessee can not be non suited for abrastion in the portal of the revenue .Therefore we deem it appropriate to set aside the orders passed by the CIT(A) with the following directions :- A. The CIT(A) is directed to decide the appeals filed by the assessee filled physically as well as electronically on merit. B. The Ld. CIT(A) shall grant the opportunity of hearing to the assessee and shall also permit the assessee to file any other documents as the assessee deem appropriate in support of his case. C. The CIT(A) is directed to decide the appeal of assessee after affording the opportunity of hearing to the assessee in accordance with the rules framed for this purpose." 6.3. Thus, respectfully following the above cited orders and taking into account all the relevant facts of the case, we consider it appropriate to remand all the issues involved in the instant appeal to the file of the ld.CIT(A) to adjudicate on merits in accordance with law. The assessee is hereby directed as well given liberty to e-file its appeal before the ld. CIT(A) within 10 days of receipt of this order. In case, the directions
P a g e | 10
A.Y. 2010-11
Ida Mary Pinto are followed then in that eventuality, the delay in e-filing the appeal shall stand condoned. The ld.CIT(A) is directed to admit and adjudicate the issues raised by the assessee in its appeal on merits in accordance with law after providing opportunity of heard to the assessee.
7. In the result, the appeal is allowed for statistical purposes.
Order pronounced in the open court on 21.07.2025. SANDEEP GOSAIN
PRABHASH SHANKAR
(न्याययक सदस्य /JUDICIAL MEMBER)
(लेखाकार सदस्य/ACCOUNTANT MEMBER)
Place: म ुंबई/Mumbai
ददनाुंक /Date 21.07.2025
Lubhna Shaikh / Steno
आदेश की प्रयियलयि अग्रेयिि/Copy of the Order forwarded to :
अपीलार्थी / The Appellant 2. प्रत्यर्थी / The Respondent. 3. आयकर आयुक्त / CIT 4. विभागीय प्रविविवि, आयकर अपीलीय अविकरण DR, ITAT, Mumbai 5. गार्ड फाईल / Guard file. सत्यावपि प्रवि //// आदेशानुसार/ BY ORDER,
उि/सहायक िंजीकार (Dy./Asstt.