2026 (2) TMI 213

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....012. A Special Leave Petition was filed against the said judgment in Special Leave Petition [C] No.6942 of 2015. The said Special Leave Petition was dismissed on 15.05.2015. 2. Meanwhile, pursuant to the issuance of certificate under Section 222 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the I-T Act), an order of attachment was issued by the Tax Recovery Officer in respect of the immovable property of the petitioner on 06.11.1998. Much later, pursuant to certificate dated 01.05.2018 for the recovery of a sum of Rs. 6,13,294/-, another order of attachment was issued. In order to realise the above amounts, a proclamation of sale was issued in Form No.I.T.C.P.13. The said proclamation of sale is challenged in this writ petition. 3. The principal groun....

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.... submits that limitation is not a bar to the sale of the property. By relying on the judgment of the Bombay High Court in Rajiv Yashwant Bhale v. Principal Commissioner of Income-Tax, Pune, [2017] 82 Taxmann.com 140 (Bombay), he submits that the Division Bench considered the limitation period under Rule 68B in the context of proceedings before the Settlement Commission. After referring to several paragraphs of the said judgment, he points out that the Division Bench examined the meaning of the expression "conclusive" in Rule 68B(1) and held that it means the point at which finality, closure or ending is reached. Applied to the facts of this case, he contends that such finality was attained only upon the SLP being dismissed. 6. Learned se....

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....ation of any appeal against the order passed by the Tax Recovery Officer under this Schedule and ending on the day the appeal is decided, shall be excluded :" 8. The text of sub rule (1) discloses that the limitation period of three years is required to be reckoned from the end of the financial year in which the order giving rise to the demand for tax, interest and the like attains conclusiveness under the provisions of Section 245-I, or, as the case may be, finality under the provisions of the Chapter-XX. Therefore, the follow on question is regarding the date on which such finality was reached. Learned counsel for the petitioner contends that such finality was reached on the date of dismissal of the Tax Case Appeal on 22.08.20....

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....f. If the petitioner had requested for such certificate and been granted the same, a statutory appeal could have been filed without applying for special leave. Without resorting to this option, the petitioner opted to directly apply for special leave before the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Nonetheless, as discussed earlier, the undoubted position is that the assessment order could have been set aside, modified or revised by the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Consequently, it cannot be said that the order attained finality until the Hon'ble Supreme Court dismissed the special leave petition on 15.05.2015. 11. 15th May 2015 falls within the financial year 2015-16, which ends on 31.03.2016. Therefore, the limitation period should be reckoned from 31.03.2....