TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1992 (11) TMI 2
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....e-tax Act, 1961 ( hereinafter referred to as " the Act " ), for the assessment years 1968-69 and 1969-70. For those two years, the assessee had disclosed in his return only his own share of the profits from a firm of which he was a partner but, failed to disclose the income falling to the share of his minor children from house property which ostensibly stood in the name of his wife but really belonged to the assessee, the wife being only a benami. The income returned and assessed were as follows : Assessment year Income returned Income assessed Rs. Rs. 1968-69 6,940 30,840 1969-70 7,020 14,472 The assessment orders were passed on February 28, 1970. The Income tax Officer initiated proceedings for the imposition of penalty under section 271(1)(c) of the Act and the matter was referred to the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner under section 274(2) of the Act. On February 28, 1970, i.e., the date of the assessment orders, section 274(2) of the Act provided as follows : " Notwithstanding anything contained in clause (iii) of sub-section (1) of section 271, if in a case falling under clause (c) of that sub section, the minimum penalty imposable exceeds a sum of r....
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....ion 261 of the Act for certificates of fitness for appeal to this court but the High Court rejected those applications. That is how the matter has come up to this court by way of special leave petitions and this court granted the special leave, as stated earlier, by its order dated August 4, 1977. We had the advantage of hearing, Mr. I. Ramamurthy, Senior Advocate, on behalf of the appellant who argued the matter very fairly in spite of the fact that nobody appeared on behalf of the respondent despite service. The learned judges of the Orissa High Court agreed with the appellate order of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal, Cuttack, dated December 19, 1973, and took the view thus (see [1976] 105 ITR 56, 62) : " If the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner had passed final orders prior to the Amending Act of 1970, there would have been no question of loss of jurisdiction, but as the matter was still pending and by change of procedure the references became incompetent, the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner had no jurisdiction to complete the proceedings because he had no longer jurisdiction to deal with the matter of this type. We are of the view that the Tribunal came to the right conc....
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....ed that, although the order of imposition of penalty was passed by the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner after the Amending Act had come into force, yet if the reference made by the Income-tax Officer was validly made before that date, the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner continued to have jurisdiction to impose penalty. In other words, the argument is that the amendment brought out in section 274(2) with effect from April 1, 1971, was not applicable to pending references. The view of the High Court, on the other hand, is that, even in a reference which was pending under section 274(2) on the date when the section stood amended, the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner could not pass any order imposing penalty if the amount of income concealed did not exceed Rs. 25,000. It may be stated at the outset that the general principle is that law which brings about a change in the forum does not affect pending actions unless an intention to the contrary is clearly shown. One of the modes by which such an intention is shown is by making a provision for change over of proceedings from the court or the Tribunal where they are pending to the court or the Tribunal which, under the new law, gets....
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....arly so indicated, that vested right will continue in spite of the change of jurisdiction of the different Tribunals or forums. This view of ours finds support in two decisions of the Gujarat High Court in CIT v. Royal Motor Car Co. [1977] 107 ITR 753 ; CIT v. Balabhai and Co. [1980] 122 ITR 301, a decision of the Patna High Court in CIT v. Ganga Dayal Sarju Prasad [1985] 155 ITR 618, a decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in CIT v. Raman Industries [1980] 121 ITR 405. The Bombay, Calcutta and Madhya Pradesh High Courts have also taken the same view. The Bombay High Court in the case CIT v. Deorao Shrawan Maundekar [1988] 169 ITR 19, speaking through Bharucha J. (as his Lordship then was), expressly dissented from the judgment under appeal before us and preferred to follow an earlier judgment of the Bombay High Court in CIT v. Rizumal Pherumal [1988] 169 ITR 25. A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court also took the same view in CIT v. Eastern Development Corporation [1982] 135 ITR 516. A Division Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in CIT v. A. N. Tiwari [1980] 124 ITR 680, followed the view of the Gujarat High Court and dissented from the judgment under appeal. T....