Constitution Art. 21 — the law in short
What the courts have decided on section Constitution Art. 21, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.
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Binoy Viswam v Union of India
Supreme CourtCuts both ways
Is the Aadhaar-PAN requirement in s.139AA valid, and can my existing PAN be cancelled under it?
Valid, with one limited relief. Section 139AA was upheld against Article 14, the classification being rationally connected to eliminating duplicate and fake PANs, and against Article 19(1)(g) as a reasonable restriction saved by Article 19(6); the Article 21 privacy challenge was expressly left to the Constitution Bench. The only relief was that the consequence in s.139AA(2) of treating a PAN as invalid could not operate retrospectively so as to unsettle completed transactions of existing PAN holders who had not enrolled.
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Preetha Krishna v ACIT (Inv)
High CourtHelps taxpayerSuperseded by amendment
Days after the search they passed an order stopping me from leaving India without a tax clearance certificate. Can they do that, and does it even apply to a Black Money Act case?
On the text that can be read, the Madras High Court found the order under s.230(1A) indefensible at every point: it was passed one day after the search, on approval of the Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) and not of the Chief Commissioner as the provision requires, in language cut and pasted across five cases, and on no material showing that the assessee was a habitual offender, had criminal antecedents or was an assured flight risk. On the Black Money Act the Court recorded that s.84, which lists the Income-tax Act provisions carried into that Act, does not include s.230. The copy available stops before the formal disposal, so the order made on the writ petition is not stated here.
Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.
