2016 (11) TMI 333

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..... Nidhi Parashar, Advocate for respondent ORDER The petitioners are aggrieved by the notices issued under Section 143 (2) and 142 (1) which according to them were issued with the sole purpose of preventing them from payment of refund claims pending before the concerned Assessing Officers for various assessment years on account of excess withholding of amounts paid towards estimated tax liability. It is submitted that the withholding on account of Section 143 (1D) which provision was introduced by the Finance Act, 2012, reads as follows: - "143(10) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), the processing of a return shall not be necessary, where a notice has been issued to the assessee under sub-section (2)" Th....

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.... under Section 143(2) of the Act. This is evident from the impugned letter dated 8th September 2015, addressed to the Petitioner. The power of the CBDT to issue such instructions can be traced only to Section 119 of the Act. Therefore, such 'instruction' also has to adhere to the discipline of Section 119 of the Act. 23. The real effect of the instruction is to curtail the discretion of the AO by 'preventing' him from processing the return, where notice has been issued to the Assessee under Section 143(2) of the Act. If the legislative intent was that the return would not be processed at all once a notice is issued under Section 143 (2) of the Act, then the legislature ought to have used express language and not the....

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....assessments are completed or pending is the one conferred by the statute and that such right can be conditioned or curtailed by other provisions as undoubtedly Section 143 (1D) does. This Court is of the opinion that the submissions of the revenue vis-a-vis Section 237 is partly correct in the sense that undoubtedly it provides for refund claim to the assessee wherever the circumstances warrant and the assessment completed yields results in excess amounts repayable. At the same time, it is hard to accept the wide proposition that the revenue seeks to place having regard to Section 237. Section 237 in one sense locates the restitutionary principle which is part of the larger right of every citizen. That it is part of the Income Tax Act an....