Failure to communicate Tribunal's order violates procedural fairness under Income Tax Act.

JUDGMENT

The petitioner is a charitable society engaged in the business of procuring and marketing of milk and production of allied products. The petitioner is also an assessee under the Income Tax Act . Grievance highlighted by the petitioner in this writ petition is against Ext.P5 order passed by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal by which the appeal submitted by the petitioner was rejected on the ground of delay.

2. Facts that led to the filing of this writ petition are as follows:

Being aggrieved by the Ext P1 order of assessment pertaining to the assessment year 2017-2018, the petitioner submitted Ext.P2 appeal before the First Appellate Authority. The said appeal was rejected as per Ext.P3. Challenging the same, the petitioner submitted Ext.P4 appeal before the Appellate Tribunal, along with the application to condone delay of 310 days in filing the same. However, the said delay condonation application was dismissed by the Appellate Tribunal as per Ext.P5. This is under challenge in this writ petition.

3. A statement has been submitted by the respondents 1 and 2, in response to the averments contained in the writ petition, wherein, they denied the averments contained in the writ petition and opposed the reliefs sought.

4. I have heard Sri.S.Arun Raj, learned counsel for the petitioner and Sri.Harikumar G. (Gopinathan Nair), learned standing counsel for the respondents 1 and 2. 5. The main challenge raised by the petitioner as against Ext.P5 order is that, the reason highlighted by the petitioner for condoning the delay was not properly appreciated by the Tribunal. This submission was made, mainly on the reason that, in the delay condonation application, the petitioner specifically explained that the order which is impugned in the appeal, i.e., the order of the First Appellate Authority, was not intimated to the petitioner and it came to know about the issuance of the order, only when the jurisdictional assessing officer intimated the same and required to make the payment as per the order. It is also mentioned in the affidavit submitted in support of the delay condonation application that, only thereupon the petitioner verified the portal and found that the order is uploaded. According to the petitioner, no intimation of uploading of the order in the portal was given to the petitioner by way of Email, despite the fact that, in the appeal itself the petitioner provided the Email address in which the intimations are to be sent. 6. After carefully going through the documents produced before this Court, I find some force in the said submission. This is particularly because, the fact that the order was not sent through Email, is not disputed at all and even going by the statement submitted by the respondent and the observations in Ext.P5 order, it can be seen that, the First Appellate order was only uploaded in the web portal, without any other intimations. Ext.P2 appeal would indicate that the petitioner furnished the Email address to which the communications are to be sent. Moreover, in the column where it is specified that “whether notices/communications may be sent on email?” the petitioner stated “yes”. Therefore, the contention of the petitioner that, it was expecting a communication in the form of an Email, from the authorities concerned as to the issuance of the order, cannot be ignored. Besides, on going through Section 282 of the Income Tax Act also, I do not find any specific provision that enables the the authorities concerned to serve any order only by way of uploading the order in the web portal. Further, it is also reported that, as a common practice, the notices and orders are communicated to the parties concerned by way of Email address provided by such parties. Evidently, in this case, no such procedure has been followed and t