Demand notice requires prior assessment order; without it, recovery proceedings are without jurisdiction and cannot stand.

A notice of demand under section 29 is valid only if preceded by a lawful order determining tax liability; where no such assessment order is shown to exist, the demand is without jurisdiction. Delay and alternative remedy did not defeat the writ challenge because the petitioner had not been supplied with the assessment order despite repeated requests, and the appellate remedy was therefore ineffective. Recovery proceedings founded on an invalid demand notice could not be sustained. The demand notice and consequential recovery action were quashed, and the respondents were restrained from acting on that demand.

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Issues: (i) Whether the petition under Article 226 was barred by delay or by the availability of an appellate remedy under the income-tax law; (ii) whether a notice of demand under section 29 could validly be issued without an assessment order in existence; (iii) whether the consequent recovery proceedings were without jurisdiction.

Issue (i): Whether the petition under Article 226 was barred by delay or by the availability of an appellate remedy under the income-tax law.

Analysis: The petition was filed after the demand notice had been followed by coercive recovery action, and the petitioner had not been supplied with the assessment order despite repeated requests. In those circumstances, the challenge was not treated as stale merely because time had elapsed from the date of the demand notice. The appellate remedy was also not regarded as effective when the assessment order itself, which would contain the reasons necessary for an appeal, had not been furnished.

Conclusion: The objection based on delay and alternative remedy failed.

Issue (ii): Whether a notice of demand under section 29 could validly be issued without an assessment order in existence.

Analysis: Section 29 was read as requiring a tax to be due in consequence of an order passed under or in pursuance of the Act before a notice of demand could issue. The statutory language was treated as a condition precedent, so that a demand notice could not stand unless an assessment order or equivalent order determining the liability had first been made. The presumption of regularity of official acts was held insufficient to prove the existence of the missing order, and neither the untraceable record nor the copy of the assessment form on file established that the necessary order had in fact been passed before the demand notice.

Conclusion: The notice of demand was illegal and without jurisdiction.

Issue (iii): Whether the consequent recovery proceedings were without jurisdiction.

Analysis: Recovery proceedings based on a demand notice that was itself unsupported by a valid antecedent order could not be sustained.

Conclusion: The recovery proceedings were without jurisdiction.

Final Conclusion: The demand notice and the recovery action founded on it were quashed, and the respondents were restrained from acting on that demand.

Ratio Decidendi: A notice of demand under section 29 is valid only when preceded by a lawful order determining tax liability, and where that foundational order is not shown to exist, both the demand notice and recovery proceedings are without jurisdiction.

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