Year-wise assessment orders and personal hearing are required where they protect appellate rights and fair reassessment procedure.

A common assessment order covering multiple assessment years was treated as unsatisfactory because year-wise orders are necessary to preserve an effective appellate remedy for each year and to enable production of the relevant original order. The reassessment was also found vulnerable for want of adequate hearing: Section 22(4) of the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006 requires a reasonable opportunity of being heard, and on the facts a personal hearing was considered necessary, especially on request. The impugned reassessment was quashed and the matter remitted for fresh adjudication with separate year-wise orders and an opportunity of personal hearing.

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Issues: (i) Whether a common assessment order covering multiple assessment years could be sustained when separate orders would facilitate appeal for each year; (ii) Whether the absence of personal hearing, in the circumstances of the case, vitiated the reassessment under Section 22(4) of the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006.

Issue (i): Whether a common assessment order covering multiple assessment years could be sustained when separate orders would facilitate appeal for each year.

Analysis: The requirement of separate orders for each assessment year was treated as more than a mere technicality because it affected the assessee's ability to prefer independent appeals and produce the relevant original assessment order for each year. The Court found that separate year-wise orders would be more convenient and appropriate in the assessment process.

Conclusion: The common order was not sustained as the matter was remitted for fresh consideration with direction to pass separate orders year-wise.

Issue (ii): Whether the absence of personal hearing, in the circumstances of the case, vitiated the reassessment under Section 22(4) of the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006.

Analysis: Section 22(4) requires that before action is taken, the dealer be given a reasonable opportunity of being heard. The Court held that, in the facts of the case, it was preferable that the assessee be afforded not only an opportunity to submit explanations and documents but also a personal hearing, and that such hearing should be granted on request.

Conclusion: The reassessment was set aside and the assessee was directed to seek personal hearing, after which the authority was to redo the proceedings in accordance with law.

Final Conclusion: The impugned reassessment was quashed and the matter was remitted for fresh adjudication with year-wise orders and an opportunity of personal hearing, resulting in relief to the assessee.

Ratio Decidendi: Where an assessment order covers multiple years, year-wise disposal may be required to preserve effective appellate remedy, and compliance with the statutory requirement of a reasonable opportunity of being heard includes affording personal hearing where warranted by the facts.

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