Constitution Art. 226

Constitution Art. 226 — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section Constitution Art. 226, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Godrej Sara Lee Ltd v Excise and Taxation Officer Supreme CourtHelps taxpayer
  The High Court dismissed my writ saying an appeal was available. Was it entitled to do that without looking at the point?
  It depends, and the Supreme Court drew the distinction that matters. Maintainability goes to the root — it decides whether the court can receive the case at all. Entertainability is discretion. The mere availability of an appeal or revision that the petitioner has not pursued does not oust the High Court's jurisdiction or make the writ petition 'not maintainable', and where the challenge is to the very jurisdiction of the authority, or is a pure question of law, the petition deserves consideration on merits.
• Anshul Jain v PCIT Supreme CourtHelps department
  The order under section 148A(d) rejects everything I said and the section 148 notice has followed. Can I take it straight to the High Court?
  Usually not. The Supreme Court dismissed the assessee's petition against a High Court order refusing to interfere at that stage, saying that the notices had been issued after his objections were considered and that any grievance on the merits had to be taken to the Assessing Officer in the reassessment proceedings. It is an order dismissing a special leave petition with brief reasons, on a record that lists no counsel for the Revenue, and the same Court took a different line four months later in Red Chilli International Sales, where it set aside a refusal to entertain a writ that rested only on the existence of an alternative remedy. Read it as the ordinary rule and not as a bar, and read it today alongside section 147A, because what happens inside a reassessment is the most disturbed part of the Act.
• Radha Krishan Industries v State of Himachal Pradesh Supreme CourtHelps taxpayer
  The department has provisionally attached my receivables. Can I go straight to the High Court, or must I appeal first?
  You can go to the High Court where no appeal lies and the statutory conditions have been breached. The Supreme Court held that a provisional attachment ordered by a Joint Commissioner acting as the Commissioner's delegate is not appealable, so the writ petition under Article 226 was maintainable and the High Court was wrong to dismiss it for alternative remedy. On the merits, the power of provisional attachment is draconian, the conditions must be strictly fulfilled, the opinion must rest on tangible material that the assessee is likely to defeat the demand, and the opportunity of being heard on objections is mandatory. The attachments were set aside.
• CIT v Chhabil Dass Agarwal Supreme CourtHelps department
  Can I go straight to the High Court against an income-tax order instead of filing the statutory appeal?
  Ordinarily no. The Supreme Court held that the Income-tax Act supplies a complete machinery for assessment and reassessment, and an assessee cannot abandon that machinery and invoke Article 226. The exceptions are narrow and have to be pleaded and made out — an order passed otherwise than in accordance with the enactment, in defiance of fundamental principles of judicial procedure, under repealed provisions, or in total violation of natural justice.
• Ajantha Industries v CBDT Supreme CourtHelps taxpayer
  My file has been moved to another city under section 127. The order says only that it was for facility of investigation, and nobody has given me the reasons. Is that enough?
  No. Section 127(1) requires the authority to record reasons before it transfers your case, and the Supreme Court held that recording them is not enough on its own — they have to reach you. Reasons sitting in the departmental file that were never communicated do not save the order: the Andhra Pradesh High Court's judgment upholding this transfer was set aside and the transfer orders quashed. The point of communicating them is to let you challenge the transfer under Constitution Art. 226, or under Constitution Art. 136, on the ground that it rests on irrelevant and extraneous material.
• Shyamsundar Sharma v ACIT High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The Initiating Officer has issued a s.24 notice and attached my accounts on the strength of a spreadsheet found in someone else's search. Will the High Court interfere now?
  Not where the officer has set out his material. The Delhi High Court dismissed the writ petition, holding that the Initiating Officer had written in detail the reasons for believing the petitioner to be a benamidar — spreadsheets of bogus expenses recovered in a search, corroborated by statements of the beneficial owners — and that the Court would not interfere with that opinion when an efficacious remedy lay before the Adjudicating Authority under s.26, which can also revoke the attachment.
• Meera Pandey v UOI High CourtHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  A benami show-cause and attachment have come on the strength of one contractor's statement. Can I go to the High Court now?
  Yes. The Allahabad High Court quashed both the s.24(1) notice and the provisional attachment where the Initiating Officer's whole case was a contractor's statement with no supporting material. It held that s.24(1) requires two things — material in the officer's possession, and material sufficient to cause a reason to believe — and that "reason to believe" is a stronger standard than "is satisfied" or "reason to suspect".

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.