Commissioner of Income-tax v. Pooja Agarwal – [2023]
An individual known as the assessee saw capital gains as a result of the sale of a specific plot of property that was purportedly located beyond the Jaipur municipal city limits. The assessee submitted its income return and claimed such capital gains were excluded because it considered such land to be agricultural land. The Assessing Officer (AO) opposed classifying the area as agricultural land and argued that it was located inside the city boundaries.
The High Court heard the case. In its judgment, the High Court instructed the Tribunal to consider and thereafter confirm how far the in-dispute land was from the municipal limits. The Tribunal, however, remanded the issue to AO for thorough verification in accordance with the ruling.
As a result, a writ petition was submitted to the High Court challenging the Tribunal’s decision to remand the case to the AO in light of the High Court’s specific instructions for the ITAT to take the appropriate action.
The distance verification needed sufficient and accompanying documentation, which was not submitted to the Tribunal, the High Court said, and therefore the Tribunal should not have remanded the case to AO. The revenue authority may have been asked by the Tribunal to provide all relevant evidence.
The Tribunal, as the last fact-finding body, has the jurisdiction to record a conclusion that is comparable to the Assessing Officer’s or CIT’s (Appeals). Moreover, the Tribunal is expected to adopt the High Court’s instruction verbatim and substantively.
The Tribunal returned the case to the AO to record a finding about the distance of the land without consulting the Revenue Authority. It completely contradicts the wording of the High court Court’s order.
Thus, the Tribunal completely disobeyed the spirit of the High Court’s judgement by remanding the case to AO rather than recording the conclusion about the distance of the land itself.
