Finalised assessments cannot be reopened beyond limitation where no timely appellate challenge was filed.

Finalised provisional assessments attain legal finality unless challenged within limitation before the competent appellate forum, and the original authority cannot reopen them without jurisdiction. Where cost data had been filed regularly and the provisional assessments were completed in the ordinary course, a later reassessment based on the same finalised assessments was beyond the permissible legal framework. The resulting demand and penalties were therefore unsustainable, and the reopening was invalid in law.

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Issues: Whether the demand could be sustained when the provisional assessments had already been finalized and had attained finality, and whether the original authority had jurisdiction to reopen those finalized assessments beyond limitation.

Analysis: The appellant had been filing cost data periodically and the provisional assessments were being finalized by the proper authority in the regular course. Once such finalization orders were passed, the revenue remedy was to challenge them in appeal within limitation. In the absence of any timely challenge, the finalized assessments attained legal finality and could not be reopened by the original authority. The reassessment made in the impugned order was therefore beyond the permissible legal framework and also beyond the jurisdiction of the authority that passed it.

Conclusion: The demand and penalties were unsustainable and the reopening of the finalized assessments was held invalid in law, in favour of the assessee.

Final Conclusion: The impugned order was set aside and the appeals were allowed because the finalized provisional assessments could not be reopened by the original authority after they had become final in law.

Ratio Decidendi: Finalized assessments attain legal finality unless validly challenged within limitation before the competent appellate forum, and they cannot be reopened by an authority lacking jurisdiction to do so.

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