TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (9) TMI 1886
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....a company engaged in the business of trading in various commodities, shares and securities and mutual funds. The petitioner was originally incorporated at Kolkata. Subsequently, the petitioner altered its Memorandum of Association so as to shift its registered office from the State of West Bengal to the State of Gujarat, which alteration was confirmed by an order dated 04.02.2011 passed by the Company Law Board, Eastern Region Bench, Kolkata, whereupon a fresh Certificate of Registration dated 02.04.2011 came to be issued by the Assistant Registrar of Companies, Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The petitioner also applied for change of its address in the Permanent Account Number (for short 'PAN') database, and a corrected PAN card bearing the Ahmedabad address was issued to the petitioner by the Income Tax Department. 2.1 Thereafter, the Principal Commissioner of Income Tax-1, Kolkata (for short 'PCIT-1, Kolkata'), in exercise of the powers conferred by subsections (1) and (2) of Section 127 of the Act, passed an order dated 07.12.2015 whereby the case of the petitioner was transferred from the Income Tax Officer, Ward 3(3), Kolkata (the respondent No. 1 herein) to the Income Ta....
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....ndent No. 1 has filed an affidavit-in-reply dated 25.09.2019. It is not disputed therein that the order dated 07.12.2015 under Section 127 of the Act was passed by the PCIT-1, Kolkata transferring the case of the petitioner to the Income Tax Officer, Ward 3(1)(4), Ahmedabad. The stand taken is that the petition is premature and that an alternative remedy of appeal is available; that the impugned Notice was issued within the period of limitation on the correct address of the petitioner; and that, "as per the jurisdictional history of PAN database, the PAN of the petitioner was lying with the respondent No. 1 at the time of issuing notice under section 148 of the Act", and hence there was nothing amiss in the respondent No. 1 assuming jurisdiction over the petitioner on the basis of its PAN record available with the central registry of the Revenue. The petitioner has filed an affidavit-in-rejoinder reiterating that the respondent No. 1 had no jurisdiction on the date of the impugned Notice, and has, pursuant to the directions of this Court, filed an additional affidavit dated 24.04.2024 placing on record the acknowledgment of the return of income and the intimation under Section 143(....
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....s "lying with" it in the PAN database is wholly untenable, since jurisdiction under the Act is conferred by orders passed under Sections 120 and 127 of the Act and not by the state of an administrative database, and that the failure of the Revenue to migrate the PAN in its own records cannot confer jurisdiction upon an officer from whom the case stands transferred by a statutory order. 4. Opposing the present petition, learned Senior Standing Counsel for the Revenue, Mr. Aaditya Bhatt has reiterated the stand taken in the affidavit-in-reply. It is submitted that the petition is premature, only a notice under Section 148 of the Act having been issued, and that the petitioner has an efficacious alternative remedy under the Act. It is submitted that the impugned Notice was issued within the period of limitation prescribed under Section 149 of the Act, at the correct address of the petitioner and after obtaining the approval of the competent authority; that, as per the jurisdictional history of the PAN database, the PAN of the petitioner was lying with the respondent No. 1 at the relevant time; and that, therefore, there was no infirmity in the respondent No. 1 assuming jurisdiction....
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....respect of any year". 7. A conjoint reading of the aforesaid provisions makes the scheme of the Act clear. The power to reopen an assessment under Section 147 of the Act, and the power to issue the jurisdictional notice under Section 148 of the Act which is the sine qua non for the exercise of that power, are conferred upon the "Assessing Officer" and upon no one else. The "Assessing Officer", by definition, is not any officer of the Income Tax Department, but only that officer who is vested with the relevant jurisdiction over the assessee by an order or direction under Section 120 of the Act "or any other provision of this Act". An order of transfer under Section 127 of the Act is one such provision. Once a case is transferred under Section 127 of the Act from one Assessing Officer to another, the transferee officer alone becomes the "Assessing Officer" of that assessee in respect of all proceedings, pending, completed or to be commenced in future, for any year, and the transferor officer stands divested of jurisdiction over that assessee in respect of all such proceedings. That is the plain consequence of the definition of "case" in the Explanation to Section 127 of the Act. ....
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.... case stood transferred, nor take away the jurisdiction of the respondent No. 2, in whom it stood vested. It is also significant that the impugned Notice records that it was issued after obtaining the satisfaction of the PCIT-1, Kolkata, i.e. the very authority which had, more than three years earlier, transferred the case of the petitioner out of its own charge, and that the petitioner, by the letter dated 02.04.2019, promptly brought the order under Section 127 of the Act to the notice of the respondent No. 1, who chose not to deal with the objection at all and instead pressed on with the proceedings by the communication dated 24.07.2019. 10. The issuance of a valid notice under Section 148 of the Act by the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over the assessee is a condition precedent to the assumption of jurisdiction under Section 147 of the Act, and is not a mere procedural formality. A notice under Section 148 of the Act issued by an officer who is not the Assessing Officer of the assessee is a notice issued without authority of law; it is non-est, and no valid reassessment can be founded upon it. This Court, in the case of Hynoup Food & Oil Industries Ltd. Vs. Assistant....