The Delhi High court bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Subramonium Prasad ruled that the assessee can not furnish any answer beneath the faceless scheme because of the technical issues in the e-filing portal.
Under Section 147 read with Section 144 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 the applicant has challenged the ex-parte to pass the order. The council passed the order under Section 147 read with Sections 144 and 144B of the Income Tax Act with not having any written submission of the applicant on record.
The applicant mentioned that with no-fault the applicant was prevented from duly submitting his answer on the ITR e-filing portal beneath the national faceless assessment scheme as the “Submit Response Tab” was disabled. The applicant files the essential information as well as the documents as attachments via email to the department. But the respondent cancelled to take the email on record, they seek the applicant to ask its grievance by writing an email to efilingwebmanager@incometax.gov.in.
The applicant submitted that he has furnished his grievance on that day with the department. But they, rather than mentioning in their email that the problem had been escalated to the team and urging the applicant to wait in reaching the solution to his problem, go forward and passed the impugned ex-parte order.
The court ruled that the has been settled law that a writ petition is being maintainable when there is a violation of natural justice.
The court mentioned that “In the present instance, since the petitioner, due to a technical glitch, has not been able to file his response/written submission, the impugned order dated March 29th, 2022 is set aside. However, the respondent is directed to re-file its reply dated March 24, 2022, with the National Faceless Appeal Centre [NFAC] within a week. The respondent is directed to pass a fresh assessment order within six weeks thereafter in accordance with the law,”
