MINDSPACE VERSONAL INFORMATION,AURANGABAD vs. ITO, WARD 1(1), AURANGABAD, AURANGABAD

Briefly, the facts of the case are that the appellant is a company which did not file any Return of Income for the A.Y. 2016-17 under the provisions of section 139(1) of the Act. On verification of the information available with the Department, the Assessing Officer (AO) noticed that the assessee made huge transactions through SBI credit cards and paid credit card bills of Rs.2,16,36,994/- and also received interest from bank of Rs.2,09,295/-. The case was reopened by way of issue of notice u/s.148 after recording the reasons.

Being aggrieved by the above assessment order, the assessee preferred appeal before the CIT(A)/NFAC who vide impugned order dated 15.01.2024 dismissed the appeal in limine for non-prosecution.

Being aggrieved, the assessee is in appeal before the Tribunal in the present appeal.

We have carefully perused the relevant material on record. It is an admitted fact that the Assessing Officer completed the assessment u/s.144 r.w.s.147 of the Act. We find the ld. CIT(A)/NFAC also without discussing anything on merits of the controversy of the additions made on account of unexplained expenditure as well as interest income, simply dismissed the appeal in limine, which is contrary to settled position of law. It is a trite law that the CIT(A) should have dealt with the merits of the issues in appeal, even in the case of an ex-parte order. In this regard, reference is being made to a decision of the Hon’ble Bombay High Court in the case of Pr.CIT(Central) Vs. Premkumar Arjundas Luthra (HUF) Bombay)/[2017] 297 CTR 614 (Bombay) wherein it was held that CIT(A) is obliged to dispose of the appeal on merits.

In the result, the appeal filed by the assessee stands partly allowed for statistical purpose.