Refusal to delete Tax Demand on Income Tax Portal: ITO sentenced to Jail for a week by High Court

The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has sentenced Harish Gidwani, Deputy Commissioner of the Income Tax Department, to one week’s simple imprisonment in a contempt case. The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the officer. In case of non-payment of fine, the officer will have to spend an additional day in jail. The court has ordered the officer to appear before the senior registrar of the court at 3 pm on December 22 from where he will be sent to jail.

Relevant Paragraph:

37. Here, in the present case, this Court has set aside the notice dated 11.09.2013 on the ground of jurisdiction with further direction that as the notice has already been quashed, consequential order, if any, are also quashed. Meaning thereby, the outstanding showing on the web portal against the applicant was to be deleted immediately after the judgment but the authorities have permitted to continue the outstanding amount on the web portal for a period of seven months, which clearly violates the judgment and order dated 31.03.2015 and this act and action of the opposite party is deliberate in nature, for which he is liable to be punished.

38. In the opinion of this Court, the action of the opposite party is not only contemptuous but is also malicious. He took care with the money of the applicant in spite of clear direction of this Court and there is no justifiable reason for the said action. If the action of Mr. Harish Gidwani, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Range -2, Lucknow is considered in the background by the allegations made against him, it was his purposeful act to harass the applicant in spite of order of the writ Court. Unnecessarily mens rea is not required to be proved in a case of contempt but in the present case the violation is willful, deliberate and coupled with intention and motive to harass the applicant.

39. For the reasons given above, this Court finds the opposite party – Mr. Harish Gidwani, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Range-2, Lucknow to be guilty under Section 12 of Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

40. On these facts, fine only would not meet the ends of justice because Mr. Harish Gidwani, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Range-2, Lucknow is a senior officer, who is the custodian of assessing of the applicant and and has committed a grossly reprehensible act and in case he is not punished, it would send down a wrong signal to other officials of Income Tax Department that even such unbusiness like conduct invites only a warning or fine, as Courts are flooded with matters, where orders are passed.

41. Accordingly, a fine of Rs.25,000/- along with simple imprisonment for a period of one week is awarded to the contemnor – opposite parity i.e. Mr. Harish Gidwani, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Range-2, Lucknow. In case of default, he would suffer one day’s further simple imprisonment.

This order was given by the bench of Justice Irshad Ali on a contempt petition filed by Prashant Chandra. The petitioner said that the Income Tax Department in Lucknow had sent him an assessment notice of about Rs 52 lakh for the year 2011-12, while he had filed his income tax from Delhi. On his petition, the High Court had quashed the notices and other orders on March 31, 2015. The petitioner alleges that despite the order of the court, the outstanding notice on the website of the Income Tax Department continued for seven months, due to which his honor was greatly affected.

On this, the court said that in spite of the order of the court, Gidwani did not remove the outstanding notice from the website with the intention of harassing the petitioner. Mere fine is not enough in this case, justice will be served only by sending the defamatory Gidwani to jail.

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