Asstt. Commissioner Of Income Tax, Circle-2, Patna v. Housing & Construction Pvt. Ltd., Shashi Niketan, Budh Marg, Patna

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA MA No.395 of 2005 1. Commissioner Of Income Tax-1, Patna. 2. Asstt. Commissioner of Income Tax, Circle-2, Patna. .. Appellants Versus Smt.Hema Devi, w/o Late Shashi Bhushan Prasad Singh, Director M/s Aparna Housing & Construction Pvt. Ltd., Shashi Niketan, Budh Marg, Patna. … Respondent. ----------- For the appellant : Mr. Harshwardhan Prasad, S. C. : Mrs. Archana Sinha, Adv. --------- 6. 20.04.2010 Heard Mr. Harshwardhan Prasad, learned senior Standing counsel for the Revenue along with Mrs. Archana Sinha, learned Junior Standing Counsel. In this appeal preferred under Section 260 A of the Income-Tax Act, 1961 (for brevity ‘the Act’), the challenge is to the order passed by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Patna Bench, Patna (for short ‘the Tribunal’) in ITA No.434/Pat/04 whereby the Tribunal has allowed the appeal preferred by the assessee-respondent. In course of hearing, on a query being made, learned standing counsel for the Revenue has fairly submitted that tax impact is approximately less than 1.5 lakh. In this context, we may refer with profit to the decision rendered in Commissioner of Income-tax v. Kanchan Pithwa Engineering Works, (2005) 276 ITR 519 wherein the Bombay High Court has held as under:- “ This Court can very well take judicial notice of the fact that by passage of time money value has gone down, the cost of litigation expenses has gone up, the assessees on the file of the Departments have increased; consequently, the burden on the Department has also increased to a tremendous extent. The corridors of the superior courts are choked with huge pendency of cases. In this view of the matter, the Board has rightly taken a decision not to file references if the tax effect is less than Rs.2 lakhs. The same policy for old matters needs to be adopted by the Department. In our view, the Board’s Circular dated March 27, 2000 is very much applicable even to the old references which are still undecided. The Department is not justified in proceeding with the old references having negligible tax effect.” The same view has been taken by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh in Commissioner of Income Tax, Bhopal vs. M. S. Agrawal (HUF), (MAIT No.4/2002). In view of the aforesaid enunciation of law, the present appeal has to pave the path of dismissal and accordingly, it is so directed. There shall be no order as to costs. (Dipak Misra, CJ.) (Mihir Kumar Jha, J.)