New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) India can reduce its annual combined oil and battery import bill by up to USD 125 billion by 2050 if EV adoption accelerates across all vehicle segments, according to a new study. "The money India can save by importing less petrol and diesel outweighs the cost of importing batteries by an order of magnitude," it said. The study, "India's EV transition: Impact of electric vehicle battery demand on import payments from 2024 to 2050", was released on Wednesday by the ... ... ...

Territorial Joint Commissioners must send a signed bilingual Welcome Letter by Registered Post with Acknowledgement Due to every newly registered taxpayer and record despatch and delivery particulars in the portal. Where postal delivery fails, the task must be forwarded to the Registering authority, which must issue a Show Cause Notice and conduct immediate physical verification of the declared place of business. Registration may be dropped or cancelled on the basis of the taxpayer's response and the physical-verification report.

The application window for one-time conversion of eligible Advance Authorisations under SION E-52 into Tariff Rate Quota authorisations for raw sugar imports is extended from 3 September 2026 to 7 September 2026, inclusive. Eligible holders may apply until 7 September 2026. All previously prescribed eligibility requirements and other conversion conditions, as amended, continue to apply, subject to the Foreign Trade Policy and applicable law.

Women's access to credit for livelihood expansion is to extend beyond Self-Help Groups to individual women members. Loan accessibility concerns include distance from bank branches, repeated visits to complete formalities, and inconsistent banking procedures. Regular State Rural Livelihood Mission meetings, bank participation, training, helplines, process improvements and coordination with bankers are intended to reduce barriers. Loan formalities are to be standardised across banks through a uniform process involving RBI and NABARD.

Suppression of material facts can bar discretionary relief under Article 226 where petitioners challenge auction proceedings while withholding binding Supreme Court directions. The petitioners knew that the Enforcement Directorate had been permitted to attach and auction the properties in accordance with law and that the auction was to continue uninterrupted. Their failure to disclose those directions, which could affect the grant of relief, constituted deliberate suppression and conflicted with the Supreme Court's directions. The challenge to the auction proceedings was therefore not entitled to discretionary writ relief.

Rejection of books of account requires identified defects in the accounting method, entries, or supporting records; non-receipt of third-party information alone is insufficient where relevant financial and transactional records are produced. Estimated gross-profit additions require a rational evidentiary basis, such as comparable cases, industry standards, or material showing income suppression, particularly where declared margins are consistent with prior years. Cash deposits recorded in the cash book and explained by earlier withdrawals cannot be treated as unexplained money without adverse evidence disproving their source. Suspicion does not replace evidence, and consistency in corresponding transactions remains relevant.

Commodity transaction turnover recorded in the books, comprising purchases, sales and profit, is not income taxable in full merely because of alleged client code modification. Only the profit embedded in those transactions is taxable under the unexplained cash credit provisions. Expenses genuinely incurred during the relevant year remain deductible under the mercantile system, even where supporting bills are raised and payment is made in the following year, provided the liability and genuineness of the expenditure are established through records.

Reassessment initiated more than three years after the relevant assessment year requires prior approval under section 151(ii) from the Principal Chief Commissioner, Principal Director General, Chief Commissioner or Director General before an order under section 148A(d) and notice under section 148 can be issued. Approval by a Principal Commissioner, who falls within section 151(i), does not meet that jurisdictional requirement. This defect cannot be validated under section 292B, rendering the section 148A(d) order, reassessment notice and consequential proceedings invalid.

Immunity from penalty under Section 270AA applies where the assessee pays assessed tax and interest within the prescribed period and does not appeal the assessment order. Once these substantive conditions are met, failure to file Form 68 is a technical or venial procedural lapse that does not defeat entitlement to immunity. Penalty for under-reporting of income under Section 270A is therefore liable to be deleted despite non-filing of Form 68.

Reassessment notices issued beyond three years from the end of the relevant assessment year required alleged escaped income to meet the applicable statutory threshold. For AY 2016-17, alleged escaped income of Rs. 2,03,816 was below Rs. 50 lakh. The notice issued on 27 July 2022 was therefore time-barred, reassessment jurisdiction was invalid, and the consequential addition was quashed.

Reassessment notices issued more than three years after the relevant assessment year require prior sanction from the specified senior authority under section 151(ii) of the Income-tax Act, 1961. Approval by a Principal Commissioner does not meet this jurisdictional requirement where sanction must come from the Principal Chief Commissioner, Principal Director General, Chief Commissioner, or Director General. Absence of approval from the prescribed authority invalidates the notice under section 148, the order under section 148A(d), and the consequential reassessment as void ab initio.

Customs out-of-charge clearance for PGA-facilitated cosmetics, drugs and medical-device imports requires verification of category-specific regulatory records before clearance. Required records include applicable registration, import or manufacturing licences and permissions, invoices, packing lists, country-of-origin certificates, compliant labels, batch quality certificates, storage-premises evidence and importer undertakings. Cosmetics, drugs and shelf-life-sensitive medical devices must meet prescribed labelling and residual shelf-life conditions. Drug and device permissions must correspond with the imported product and quantity. Discrepancies, doubts, deficient shelf life and specified new-product imports require referral to the relevant port office.

Documentation for approval under the Eligible Manufacturer Importer Scheme is simplified by reducing application disclosures and mandatory uploads. Core identity, manufacturing or job-work status, financial solvency, insolvency status, and legal-compliance declarations remain relevant. Mandatory documents are limited to the UDYAM certificate where MSME status is claimed, a UDIN-bearing Chartered Accountant certificate, and authorisation for the signatory. The Chartered Accountant must address financial capability and provide reasons for negative net worth or net current assets. Applicants must ensure truthful submissions and notify changes affecting eligibility.

Reassessment notices issued beyond three years require the alleged escaped income to meet the prescribed monetary threshold for extended limitation. Where the recorded escaped income for Assessment Year 2017-18 was below Rs. 50 lakh, the extended period was unavailable. The notice issued under Section 148 was therefore invalid, and the consequential reassessment could not stand.

Before initiating recovery, the proper officer may communicate the identified short payment or non-payment and require the registered person, within the prescribed reasonable period, either to pay the amount or explain the GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B difference. Recovery under section 79 need not be initiated where the explanation satisfactorily justifies the mismatch or the unpaid amount is paid. Where the registered person does not respond, does not pay within the permitted time, or fails to provide a satisfactory explanation, the proper officer may commence recovery proceedings for the unpaid self-assessed tax and related interest.

Industrial development facilitation extends beyond allocation of industrial plots to infrastructure development, services, and a favourable business environment. Industry-support policies seek to encourage participation by entrepreneurs, promote growth across sectors, and improve investment conditions without distinction between small and large enterprises. Dry-port infrastructure strengthens national and international trade connectivity, supporting import and export expansion for industrial and agro-based businesses.

Decentro operates an integrated fintech infrastructure platform combining payment acceptance, identity verification, banking and AI-led collections through a unified integration layer. It holds Payment Aggregator authorisations for online and physical payments, a Payment Service Provider licence through its GIFT City entity, and certification for offline identity-verification workflows. These capabilities support embedded financial products, payment acceptance, lending collections and related financial workflows for enterprise users.

Departmental GST appeals are subject to monetary thresholds for GSTAT, High Court and Supreme Court filings, but an appeal exceeding the relevant threshold must still be assessed on its merits. The disputed amount is determined according to whether the case concerns tax, interest, penalty, late fee or erroneous refund, with composite orders assessed on the aggregate amount. Thresholds do not apply to constitutional or delegated-legislation challenges, recurring interpretative issues, valuation, classification, refunds, place of supply, adverse comments or costs, and other matters requiring contest in the interest of justice or revenue.

NBFCs and HFCs can complement bank-led credit delivery through last-mile reach, sector-specific expertise, digital infrastructure, consent-based data sharing and cash-flow-based underwriting. Sustainable growth requires strong liquidity risk management, governance, compliance culture, diversified funding, stress testing, early-warning systems, dynamic provisioning and sound underwriting standards. Proportionate scale-based regulation, digital lending standards and a substance-over-form approach seek to support innovation while preserving financial stability. Customer protection, responsible lending, grievance redressal, fair recovery conduct, cyber resilience and protection of customer data remain essential.

Delhi GST amendments replace the earlier input tax credit matching framework with an auto-generated electronic statement that identifies credit available and credit restricted on supplier-risk criteria. Eligible credit may be self-assessed, but credit relating to unpaid supplier tax must be reversed with applicable interest and may be re-availed after payment. Outward-supply details and returns are subject to filing conditions, including prior-period compliance, with conditional exceptions for specified persons. The amendments also revise refund rules, interest on wrongly availed and utilised credit, and electronic credit ledger restrictions.