M.R. Shah, J.

1. By way of this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioner has prayed for appropriate writ, direction and order to quash and set aside the impugned notice under Section 148 of the Income Tax Act, by which, the assessment for A.Y. 2011-12 is sought to be reopened alleging inter alia that income chargeable to tax has escaped assessment.

2. At the time of issuance of notice in the present petition, this Court passed the following order.

"It is the case on behalf of the petitioner-assessee that as such, two sets of reasons recorded are supplied to the assessee. Shri B.S. Soparkar, learned advocate appearing on behalf of the petitioner-assessee has submitted that the first set of reasons recorded were supplied on 28th March 2016, against which the assessee raised objections which came to be disposed of by dealing with the same mainly on the ground that the objections were submitted belatedly. It is submitted that thereafter, without finalizing the re-assessment on the basis of the first notice and the reasons recorded, the petitioner-assessee has been served with another set of reasons recorded, in which, ground Nos. 1 & 3 in the original reasons are the same. It is submitted that when it was pointed out that in the earlier assessment year, deduction under Section 10[B] of the Income-tax Act, 1961 was granted, still the same has not been dealt with by the Assessing Officer.

Notice returnable on 28th December 2016. By way of ad interim relief, it is directed that the Assessing Officer may proceed further with the re-assessment proceedings, however, he may not pass any final reassessment order till then.

Direct service is permitted today."

3. With respect to the two separate reasons recorded to reopen the assessment, both by different Assessing Officer, it is clarified that the reasons recorded by the present Assessing Officer having jurisdiction namely Shri M. Anand Kumar (Page 32) are to be considered as reasons recorded and the department may be permitted to withdraw the reasons recorded by earlier Assessing Officer namely Shri B.P. Shrivastav.

4. It is not in dispute that even against the reasons recorded by the present Assessing Officer namely Shri M. Anand Kumar the petitioner assessee did submit the objections vide communications dated 06.09.2016 and 18.10.2016. However the same has not been dealt with on merits by the Assessing Officer who has issued the impugned notice under Section 148 of the Act on the ground that the same are submitted belatedly. However, it is not in dispute that till 06.09.2016 and 18.10.2016 the Assessing Officer had not finalized the re-assessment proceeding. Therefore, the Assessing Officer ought to have considered and disposed of the objection on merits, which the Assessing Officer is bound to dispose of as per the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of G.K.N. Dirveshafts (India) Ltd. vs. ITO reported in (2003) 259 ITR 19 and the decision of the Division Bench of this Court in the case of Arvind Mills Ltd. vs. Assistant Commissioner of Wealth Tax reported in (2014) 141 Taxmann 210 (Guj). Under the circumstances, present petition is disposed of at this stage by directing the Assessing Officer to consider the objections submitted by the petitioner submitted vide communications dated 06.09.2016 and 18.10.2016 and dispose of the same on merits and pass a speaking order, before finalizing and/or passing any order on re-assessment. As per the decision of the Division Bench of this Court, even after disposal of the objections by passing speaking order, some reasonable time is to be given to the assessee to challenge the notice and the order disposing of the objection, it is observed and directed that in case the decision on the objection is against the assessee and the Assessing Officer does not agree with the objections raised by the petitioner-assessee, in that case, he may not pass any final re-assessment order for a period of two weeks from