Fair hearing and service of notice require fresh consideration of declaration forms when final hearing notice was not duly served.

Non-service of notice for the final hearing deprives the assessee of a fair opportunity to place relevant material before the authority, so a revisional order based on presumed non-production of declaration forms cannot be sustained. Where the assessee was not duly notified, the forms could not be excluded merely because they were not produced on the last hearing date. The matter must be reconsidered on merits after granting a fresh opportunity to produce the documents and be heard, and the revisional order is liable to be set aside.

---

---

Issues: (i) Whether the revisional order could be sustained when notice of the last date of hearing was not duly served, and (ii) whether the declaration forms could be excluded from consideration despite the absence of notice for the final hearing.

Issue (i): Whether the revisional order could be sustained when notice of the last date of hearing was not duly served.

Analysis: The revisional authority recorded a factual finding that notice for the last date of hearing was not served. Once such non-service was found, the assumption that the assessee had failed to produce the declaration forms on the hearing date could not stand, because the basis for treating the assessment as properly concluded was undermined. The absence of proper notice also meant that the assessee had not been afforded a fair opportunity to place its material before the assessing authority.

Conclusion: The revisional order could not be sustained on that basis and was liable to be set aside.

Issue (ii): Whether the declaration forms could be excluded from consideration despite the absence of notice for the final hearing.

Analysis: Where no notice was served for the final hearing, the assessee could not be faulted for not producing the forms on that date. In such circumstances, the matter ought to have been examined on merits by considering the forms, instead of rejecting them on the premise of non-production before the assessing officer. The proper course was to provide a fresh opportunity and decide the matter according to law.

Conclusion: The declaration forms could not be excluded merely for non-production on the last hearing date, and the matter had to be reconsidered afresh.

Final Conclusion: The revisional order was quashed and the matter was sent back for fresh adjudication by the assessing authority after giving the assessee an opportunity to produce the relevant documents.

Ratio Decidendi: When non-service of notice for the final hearing is found, the assessee cannot be denied consideration of material that it could have produced on that date, and the matter must be decided afresh after a fair opportunity of hearing.

---