The first ground of challenge to the said order was by contending that the Assessing Officer had passed the order under Section 143(3) read with Section 144C of the Act on February 6, 2023 without appreciating the fact that the time limit for passing the order expired on January 31, 2023 in terms of the provisions contained in sub-section 13 of Section 144C of the Act. Apart from the above ground, the assessee also challenged the order on merits. The learned Tribunal took up for consideration the question of limitation at the first instance and after taking note of the decision in the case of Vodafone Idea Ltd., (2023) 156 taxmann.com 258 (Bom.) and certain other decisions of the co-ordinate Bench of the Tribunal, took note of the common functions module in Instruction No.3, issued by the Directorate of Income Tax (System), New Delhi dated September 17, 2019 on the subject of “roll out of facility for system generated documents (i.e. intimation letter)” containing Document Identification Number (DIN) for documents issued outside the system but uploaded manually in the Income Tax Officers Application (ITOA). In this regard, reference was made to the Instruction contained in paragraph 7. After taking note of the said Instruction, the learned Tribunal considered the facts and found that the instruction issued by the DRP along with intimation dated December 22, 2022 was uploaded in the portal on the same day and was available to the Assessing Officer for passing the assessment order which ought to have been passed on or before January 31, 2023 in terms of Sub-section 13 of Section 144C of the Act. However, the final assessment order was passed by the Assessing Officer on February 6, 2023 which is beyond the statutory limitation prescribed under Sub-section 13 of Section 144C of the Act. Therefore, the learned Tribunal came to the conclusion that the final assessment order passed is beyond the limitation prescribed under the Act and therefore it is bad in law and accordingly the same was quashed.
