R.V. Raveendran, J.—The twenty petitioners are all Income Tax assessee. The petitioners are either individuals or proprietary concerns or partnership firms or private trusts or private limited companies incorporated under the Companies Act. They all belong to a group known as Yenepoya Group. They have their place of residence/ place of business/office at Mangalore. Their assessment files are with several different assessing authorities at Mangalore.

2. The Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Bangalore (third respondent) initiated proceedings under section 127 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 ("the Act", for short), for transfer of the Income Tax cases of all the petitioners from their respective jurisdictional assessing authorities to the Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Central Circle-III, Bangalore (second respondent). The respective earlier assessing authorities are impleaded as respondents (first respondent in the respective cases). The third respondent caused show-cause notices dated August 20, 1992, to be issued to all the petitioners proposing to transfer their cases from their respective existing assessing authorities at Mangalore to the file of the second respondent