2026 (9) TMI 1538

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..... 2. At the outset, it is noticed that the appeal has been filed with a delay of 689 days. The learned counsel for the assessee has placed before us a series of orders passed in the assessee's case and submitted that the delay occurred because the assessee, being a person of limited financial means and wholly unfamiliar with tax laws and procedures, was unaware that the order passed under section 263 was required to be challenged independently. It was further submitted that the assessee was neither conversant with notices and communications transmitted through e-mail and the Income-tax portal nor aware of the appellate remedy available against the revisionary order. 3. The relevant chronology emerging from the record is that the origi....

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....ys. The only explanation offered is that the assessee was unaware of the legal remedy available against the order passed under section 263 and did not have knowledge of the notices or communications uploaded on the electronic portal or sent through e-mail. While some latitude may ordinarily be shown where a litigant satisfactorily demonstrates that the delay arose from circumstances genuinely beyond his control, the expression "sufficient cause" cannot be construed so liberally as to render the statutory period of limitation otiose. A mere assertion of ignorance of law, procedure or the availability of an appellate remedy, unsupported by any cogent material explaining the entire period of delay, cannot constitute sufficient cause for condon....

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....nsettle the very substratum of the subsequent proceedings and, in effect, tinker with the operative directions already issued by the Tribunal in the second round of litigation. It could render the earlier appellate order and the proceedings undertaken pursuant thereto otiose or internally inconsistent. 8. Judicial propriety and orderly administration of appellate proceedings require that an order of the Tribunal, which has attained operative finality between the parties and pursuant to which proceedings are presently pending before the Assessing Officer, should not be indirectly disturbed through the entertainment of a grossly belated appeal against the anterior order, particularly when the threshold requirement of showing sufficient cau....