JUDGMENT :

1. Petitioner filed return of income for Assessment Year (“AY”) 2017-2018 on 25th November 2017 in the name of Optra Technologies Private Limited. By that date, the name of Petitioner had already been changed with the approval and sanction of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs vide communication dated 31st January 2017. The PAN number reflected in the income-tax return filed by assessee for the relevant AY was correctly mentioned. On account of a mismatch between the PAN number reflected in the income-tax return and the name of the company, a communication dated 29th May 2018 came to be issued by the Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax (“DCIT”), Centralised Processing Centre (“CPC”), Bangalore asking Petitioner to rectify the defects within a period of fifteen days from the date of receipt of such a communication. As Petitioner did not do the needful within the prescribed time, the income-tax return filed by Petitioner (assessee) was declared to be invalid.

2. In order to overcome this difficulty, an application under Section 119 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (“the Act”) was filed by Petitioner before the Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (“PCIT”)-2, Pune, which came to be rejected by an order dated 9th September 2021 passed by the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (“PCCIT”), Pune.

3. Against the order, Petitioner filed a Writ Petition being Writ Petition No. 88661 of 2022 impugning the order passed by the PCCIT and one of the primary grounds raised was Petitioner’s application came to be rejected without even giving a personal hearing. This Court was pleased to dispose the petition vide its order dated 3rd October 2022 by quashing and setting aside the order dated 9th September 2021 and remanding the matter for de-novo consideration.

4. The matter was considered de-novo by the PCCIT, who again rejected Petitioner’s application for condonation of delay under Section 119(2)(b) of the Act. The reason for rejection is contained in paragraph 6 of the impugned order, which reads as under :

“6. Contention of the AR was duly considered. Communication by email is an established and legally accepted and sufficient mode of communication. A company being artificial judicial person, is always represented by an individual to discharge its legal and other obligations. The argument that the company's CFO was irregular in his duties and hence the company could not discharge its legal obligation, is not an acceptable view. If such an argument is permitted, the companies can get away from very serious obligations too. Based on facts of the case, it is observed that the applicant has failed to prove any genuine hardship, which was beyond it's control, with necessary evidence.”

5. Mr. Suresh Kumar wanted time to file an affidavit-in-reply. In our view, no purpose will be served by filing a reply because the impugned order speaks for itself. Moreover, the petition was served in early November 2023 and the department had almost six weeks to file a reply if they really wanted to oppose the petition.

6. We are not happy with the reason given in the impugned order rejecting Petitioner’s application for condonation of delay.

7. Petitioner’s explanation for not meeting with the time prescribed for correcting the mismatch is that, the first notice of invalid return under Section 139(9) of the Act was sent on registered email-ID of one Mr. Prasad Sathe on 30th May 2018 and the final notice of invalid return dated 19th June 2018 under Section 139(9) of the Act was also sent on the email-ID of Mr. Prasad Sathe. Mr. Prasad Sathe was the Chief Operating Officer leading Petitioner’s Pune office operation and was heading Human Resources, Finance, Information Technologies and Operation teams. He was also responsible for statutory compliance of the company. All responsibilities of complying with statutory provisions were entrusted to Mr. Prasad Sathe. Mr. Prasad Sathe did not deliver despite the responsibility given to him. Mr. Prasad Sathe left the or