A Bench of Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarthana exercised the Court’s powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to say that the present ruling will apply not just to the order under challenge but to all similar judgments across the country.
“There appears to be genuine non-application of the amendments as the officers of the Revenue may have been under a bonafide belief that the amendments may not yet have been enforced … [Present interpretation] will strike a balance between the rights of the Revenue as well as the respective assesses as because of a bonafide belief of the officers of the Revenue in issuing approximately 90,000 such notices, the Revenue may not suffer as ultimately it is the public exchequer which would suffer,” the Bench held.
The top court said the Revenue in the cases under challenge had made a “bonafide mistake” in issuing notices under Section 148 of the Income Tax Act instead of the newly-amended provisions and therefore,
“The same ought not to have been issued under the unamended Act and ought to have been issued under the substituted provisions of Sections 147 to 151 of the IT Act as per the Finance Act, 2021“.
Source: Barandbench
