Rule 258 — Cancellation of certificate.
Sub-rule (1) provides that a certificate of registration stands cancelled when the name of the holder of the certificate is removed from the register under these rules.
Sub-rule (2) sets out what follows. When the name is removed, the Chief Commissioner of Income-tax or Commissioner of Income-tax maintaining the register must notify the fact of the removal to the authorised income-tax practitioner concerned, to other Chief Commissioners of Income-tax or Commissioners of Income-tax, who in turn are to notify the fact of the removal to the income-tax authorities subordinate to them, and to the Appellate Tribunal.
Registration of an authorised income-tax practitioner is recorded in a register kept by one Chief Commissioner or Commissioner, but the practitioner appears before officers and the Tribunal across the country. If cancellation were a fact known only where the register is kept, a person whose name had been removed could go on appearing elsewhere. The rule makes cancellation automatic on removal from the register, so that no separate order of cancellation is needed, and then requires the fact to be pushed outwards to everyone who might otherwise let him appear.
Cancellation is a consequence, not a separate decision: it happens by force of sub-rule (1) the moment the name is removed under these rules, so a practitioner looking for an order cancelling his certificate will not find one — the removal is the operative act, and any challenge is to that. The notification duty in sub-rule (2) runs in three directions and is cast in mandatory terms, and it includes the practitioner himself, so he is not left to discover the position from a refusal to be heard. The chain is deliberate: the register-keeping authority tells the other Chief Commissioners and Commissioners, and they tell the authorities subordinate to them.
The name of an authorised income-tax practitioner is removed from the register maintained by a Commissioner of Income-tax. His certificate of registration stands cancelled at that point without any further order. The Commissioner notifies the practitioner, the other Chief Commissioners and Commissioners, who pass the fact down to their subordinate authorities, and the Appellate Tribunal, so that his cancelled status is known wherever he might have appeared.
A practitioner meets this rule in the intimation of removal sent to him by the Chief Commissioner or Commissioner maintaining the register; a taxpayer does not meet it directly and instead encounters its effect when a representative is no longer able to appear on his behalf.
A certificate of registration shall stand cancelled when the name of the holder of the certificate is removed from the register under these rules.