Lupin Investments Pvt. Ltd. 2023 24 vs Centralized Processing Centre — Income Tax | Bombay HC (2025)

Lupin Investments Pvt. Ltd. 2023 24 vs Centralized Processing Centre — Income Tax | Bombay HC (2025)

What the court decided

AI extract

Outcome

Petition disposed of in the above terms: petitioner to file the impugned order (pages 112-114), the uploaded ITR Form and the defective return with respondent no.2 within one week; respondent no.2 to dispose of the rectification petition dated 25 November 2024 after hearing, by rectification order on or before 30 April 2025. Prayer clauses (a) and (b) were not pressed and were accepted as withdrawn.

Issue for consideration

Whether the respondents could reject the petitioner's rectification petition (dated 25 November 2024) on the ground that no base order is available on their system, notwithstanding that the impugned Section 139(9) order is available on the respondents' own system, and what directions should issue for disposal of the rectification petition.

Court's answer

The respondents' rejection of the rectification petition on the ground that the base order is not available is inexplicable, since the impugned Section 139(9) order is available on the respondents' system and was downloaded by the petitioner from it; the Court observed this requires a serious investigation into the respondents' IT system, as such incompetency would be against the Government's efforts at electronic-mode adjudication. The Court, however, expressly did not go into the larger controversy.

Ratio / Principle

The petitioner was directed to file pages 112 to 114 of the petition (the order treating the return as invalid), a copy of the ITR Form uploaded with the respondents' system, and the return treated as defective, with respondent no.2 within one week from uploading of the order; on receipt, respondent no.2 was directed to dispose of the rectification petition dated 25 November 2024 after giving the petitioner an opportunity of hearing, and pass the rectification order on or before 30 April 2025.

Detailed headnote1 paragraphs

Bombay High Court (M.S. Sonak & Jitendra Jain, JJ.) disposed of a writ petition by Lupin Investments Pvt. Ltd. challenging an order of the Centralized Processing Centre, Bengaluru under Section 139(9) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 treating its AY 2023-24 return as defective for non-filing of the tax audit report required under Section 44AB. Prayer clauses (a) and (b) were not pressed. Without entering the larger controversy, the Court found the respondents' rejection of the petitioner's rectification petition (filed 25 November 2024) — communicated by email dated 11 February 2025 on the ground that no 'base order' was available on the system — inexplicable, since the impugned order was itself available on and downloadable from the respondents' system, and observed that this required serious investigation into the respondents' IT system as it ran counter to electronic-mode adjudication. The petitioner was directed to file the impugned order, the uploaded ITR Form and the defective return with respondent no.2 within one week; respondent no.2 was directed to dispose of the rectification petition after affording a hearing and pass the rectification order on or before 30 April 2025.

PPN

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PRACHI PRANESH NANDIWADEKAR

Digitally signed by PRACHI PRANESH NANDIWADEKAR Date: 2025.03.24 16:10:55 +0530

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY ORDINARY ORIGINAL CIVIL JURISDICTION

WRIT PETITION NO.918 OF 2025

Lupin Investments Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai .. Petitioner Versus Centralized Processing Centre, Income Tax Department,Bengaluru & Ors. .. Respondents

Mr. Jeet Kamdar, i/by Mr. Atul K. Jasani for the petitioner. Mr. Akhileshwar Sharma for the respondents.

CORAM M.S. Sonak & Jitendra Jain, JJ. DATED: 24 March 2025

PC :-

This petition, for the assessment year 2023-24 is filed challenging an order passed by the respondent no.1-CPC, Bengaluru treating the return filed by the petitioner as defective return under Section 139(9) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (‘the Act’) on the ground that the petitioner has not filed the tax audit report as required under Section 44AB of the Act. The impugned order is at pages 112 to 114 of the present petition.

Mr. Kamdar, learned counsel for the petitioner at the outset, after arguing for some time, states that he does not wish to press prayer clauses (a) and (b) of the petition. We accept the said statement.

However, learned counsel for the petitioner submits that after the impugned order was passed, the petitioner has filed a rectification petition on 25 November 2024 for rectification of the impugned order. The respondents have not passed any order disposing the said rectification petition. However, vide email dated

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11 February 2025 sent by the Deputy Commissioner of Income-tax to the representative of the petitioner, the Joint Commissioner of Income-tax stated in the said email that the rectification petition cannot be entertained since there is no base order available on the system to be rectified and, therefore, the rectification petition is rejected.

We fail to understand the above reasoning because the order passed under Section 139(9) of the Act treating the return of the petitioner as defective is an order available on the system of the respondents and from that system, the petitioner has downloaded the order which is at pages 112 to 114 of the petition. If the petitioner can access the system of the respondents to download the impugned order, we fail to understand why the respondents cannot access the said order and reject the rectification application on the ground that the base order is not available. This requires a serious investigation into the IT system of the respondents because the said incompetency would be against the efforts of the Government for transmission to electronic mode of adjudication of the disputes under the Act.

However, without going into the larger controversy, we direct the petitioner to file pages 112 to 114 of the petition which is the order treating the return as invalid with respondent no.2 within one week from the date of uploading the present order. The petitioner is also directed to file a copy of ITR Form uploaded with the system of the respondents and the return which respondent no.1 has treated as defective. On receipt of the petitioner filing above documents, respondent no.2 will dispose of the rectification petition filed by the petitioner vide letter dated 25 November 2024. The said rectification petition should be disposed of after giving petitioner an opportunity of hearing. The rectification order should be passed on or before 30 April 2025.

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Petition is disposed of in above terms.

(Jitendra Jain, J) (M.S. Sonak, J)