The High Court should not ordinarily interfere with the order of the tax authorities under Article 226 of the Constitution and should relegate the parties before the hierarchy of authorities provided under the Act to vindicate their grievances.

R.K. GULATI, J.

1. THIS writ petition is directed against the order dated January 29, 1986, passed by respondent No. 1, the Commissioner (Appeals), Kanpur. By the impugned order, respondent No. 1 has set aside the assessment for further investigation on a limited issue in respect of the petitioner's claim for deduction of an amount as business expenditure representing incentive bonus which had been disallowed by the Inspecting Assistant Commissioner (Assessment), the Assessing Officer.

2. BRIEFLY, the facts are that in the assessment year 1980-81, the petitioner made a claim for deduction of Rs. 12,68,683, out of its gross income being the amount paid as incentive bonus to its employees. It appears that a similar claim was also made, though for a different amount, in the assessment year 1981-82. That claim was disallowed on several grounds by the Assessing Officer including that the claim did not satisfy the requisite conditions of Section 36(1)(ii) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 ('the Act'). One such ground for disallowance of the petitioner's claim was that the payments representing incentive bonus were not genuine and it was a bogus claim. The findings recorded in this regard were that relevant entries, instead of being made in the wage registers, were recorded on a separate sheet. The payments were received against thumb impressions. In a large number of cases, the thumb impressions were identical or similar. In the first appeal, these findings were sustained. During the hearing of that appeal, the Assessing Officer was required to submit a remand report it appears that during remand proceedings, an expert's opinion on the genuineness of the thumb impressions was called for. The doubts of the Assessing Officer that in most of the cases the thumb impressions were identical or similar was supported by the said report. The Commissioner (Appeals), after having discussed the remand report and other grounds of disallowance, confirmed the action of the Assessing Officer. As regards the genuineness of the claim, he held as under:-

"On the other hand, when the assessee produced some sample vouchers showing payments of four different departments, it was found that adjustment of the loan to the workers was made against incentive bonus and the payments were shown as received by the workers but the thumb impressions in respect of such receipts were found to belong to persons other than the workers. When this default was pointed out, the explanation offered was that the workers had authorised some other persons to receive payments. Surprisingly, this fact was not noted in the wage sheets. Even the statements of such authorised persons have been found to be unreliable. Therefore, the clear impression is that for reasons best known to the appellant company, the nature of the payment (and to the extent incurred) is being withheld and even the genuineness of the payment is doubtful."

By the time the assessment for the year in dispute was finalised, the above proceedings for the year 1981-82 had already taken place but the matter was pending adjudication in second appeal before the Tribunal. The Assessing Officer basically relied on the findings recorded in the assessment year 1981-82 when he disallowed the claim for the year in question. Being aggrieved, the petitioner appealed to the Commissioner (Appeals), respondent No. 1. During the pendency of the appeal before respondent No. 1, the Tribunal decided the appeal for the assessment year 1981-82. It reversed the findings on each ground on which the disallowance was sustained. The expert's opinion was discarded by the Tribunal on the ground that the expert had not recorded any categorical finding about the forgery in the thumb impressions. For this view, the Tribunal relied upon the following observations in the expert's report:

"In spite of the above, as many thumb impressions seem to be similar to one another, without photo enlargement, scientific and satisfactory opinion cannot be giv