Discontinuance of business plea fails where closure return was not filed and seized material linked to the business.

A dealer claiming discontinuance of business must comply with the statutory requirement to file the prescribed return up to the date of closure, and a belated plea of abandonment unsupported by contemporaneous material will not defeat a best judgment assessment. Here, the assessee had not asserted discontinuance in response to the provisional assessment notice, had not filed the closure return within time, and did not successfully challenge the finding linking the seized slips to the business. The court therefore upheld the best judgment assessment and consequential penalty, and dismissed the writ petition.

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Issues: Whether the best judgment assessment and consequential penalty were liable to be quashed on the ground that the assessee had allegedly discontinued business on the date of search and that the assessing authority could not rely on the seized slips.

Analysis: The assessee claimed that business had been abandoned on the date of search and that the slips were unsigned and undated. The record, however, did not contain any contemporaneous assertion of discontinuance in the reply to the provisional assessment notice, nor was the statutory return up to the date of discontinuance filed within the prescribed time after closure. The statutory obligation on a dealer discontinuing business during a provisional assessment period was not complied with. The assessing authority had also recorded a factual finding linking the slips with the business, and that finding was not challenged in the proper appellate forum. In these circumstances, the plea of prior closure was not supported by the materials on record.

Conclusion: The challenge to the assessment failed. The best judgment assessment and the consequential penalty were upheld, and the writ petition was dismissed.

Final Conclusion: The assessee was not entitled to relief because the asserted discontinuance of business was not established and the statutory return requirement on closure was not satisfied.

Ratio Decidendi: A dealer who claims discontinuance of business must comply with the statutory obligation to file the prescribed return up to the date of closure, and a belated plea of discontinuance unsupported by contemporaneous material will not defeat a best judgment assessment based on the record.

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