The court ruled that minor corrections in tax returns should not hinder processing, emphasizing the need to consider genuine hardship in applications for condonation of delay.

ORDER :

BHARGAV D. KARIA, J.

1. As both these petitions are identical, for the sake of convenience, Special Civil Application No.12718 of 2024 is considered as a lead matter.

2. Rule, returnable forthwith. Learned Senior Standing Counsel Mr. Karan Sanghani waives service of notice of Rule on behalf of the respondents.

3. By this petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, the petitioner has prayed for the following reliefs:

“(A) Your Lordships may be pleased to issue a writ of certiorari or a writ in the nature of certiorari or any other appropriate writ, order or direction thereby directing the Respondent to grant the refund of Rs.15,61,884/- due to the Petitioner along with statutory interest.

(B) Your Lordships may be pleased to issue a writ of certiorari or a writ in the nature of certiorari or any other appropriate writ, order or direction for quashing and setting aside the impugned order dated 24.08.2023 passed by the Respondent at Annexure ‘L’.

(C) By way of ad-interim relief, your Lordship may direct the Respondent to accept the Petitioner’s corrected return, so that the Petitioner does not have to pay interest on delayed filing of return.

(D) The Hon’ble Court may issue directions to Respondent to direct the concerned Assessing Officer to accept the Petitioner’s corrected return and process the same in accordance with law.”

4. The petitioner is a private limited company. The petitioner filed the return of income under Section 139(1) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (for short, the Act) on 24/09/2018 along with the Tax Audit Report in Form 3CA and 3CD dated 25/08/2018 showing total income of Rs.81,85,340/- and claiming refund of Rs.38,08,115/- after adjustment of the tax paid of Rs.59,09,879/- and TDS of Rs.21,01,764/-. On 03/09/2019, the petitioner received an intimation from Centralized Processing Center (CPC) pointing out the mismatch in the form of return filed by the petitioner being the difference in the amount of dis-allowance of expenditure reported in tax audit report in Form 3CD but not taken into account in computing the total income in the return filed as the petitioner has clubbed the dis-allowance of expenditure in column-23 instead of column-15 and column-18.

5. On receipt of the above intimation, the petitioner filed corrected return of income after making corrections by showing dis-allowance of expenditure in correct column-15 and column-18 in the form of return by bifurcating the same from column-23 and total income of the petitioner remained unchanged.

6. It is the case of the petitioner that the last date for filing the revised return as per Section 139(5) of the Act was 31/03/2019 and as the petitioner had received intimation on 03/09/2019 i.e. after the expiry of the time limit available for filing revised return, the petitioner had no option but to file the corrected return online in electronic mode as per the intimation received from the CPC.

7. It appears that the CPC instead of processing the return either by making adjustment in the original return or by accepting the corrections as per the corrected return dated 06/09/1999 filed by the petitioner considered the corrected return as belated revised return filed by the petitioner and forwarded the same to the Jurisdictional Assessing Officer (JAO) deemed to be return filed under Section 119(2)(b) of the Act and intimated the petitioner accordingly by communication dated 23/09/2019.

8. The petitioner, therefore, on receipt of the communication dated 23/09/2019 preferred applications dated 30/07/2020 and 06/08/2020 under Section 119(2)(b) of the Act to condone the delay in filing the correct return of income so as to consider it as revised return for processing the same by the CPC.

9. The petitioner received a communication dated 10/05/2023 to furnish response on or before 17/05/2023 to show cause as to why the application of the petitioner to condone the delay should not be rejected.

10. The petitioner filed the reply dated 17/05/2023. The pet