Lucknow, Dec 16 (PTI) The Allahabad High Court on Friday awarded an income tax deputy commissioner seven days imprisonment and imposed a fine Rs 25,000 on him for contempt of court.
Justice Irshad Ali also directed deputy commissioner Harish Gidwani to surrender before its senior registrar at 3 pm on December 22.
The high court’s Lucknow bench passed the order on a contempt petition moved by Prashant Chandra.
In his plea, he has alleged that the bench had on March 31, 2015, quashed an assessment notice of about Rs 52 lakh issued to him by the income tax department and also the consequential orders passed in pursuance to the notice, holding them to be without jurisdiction as the assessment should have been done in Delhi instead of Lucknow.
Despite the bench’s order, the outstanding of notice of the assessment year 2011-12 became operative on the web portal of the department for seven months, Chandra has alleged, pleading that it has ruined his reputation. Passing the order, Justice Ali said, “The fine only would not meet the ends of justice becauseGidwani, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Range-2, Lucknow, is a senior officer, who is the custodian of assessing of the applicant and has committed a grossly reprehensible act and if he is not punished, it would send down a wrong signal to other officials of the income tax Department that even such un-business like conduct invites only a warning or fine.” “As per own admission of Gidwani’s lawyer Manish Mishra, the outstanding amount was deleted from the web portal after seven months, which amounts deliberate and wilful disobedience of the judgment of this court,” he said.
If Gidwani’s action is considered in the background of the allegations made against him, it is his purposeful act to harass the petitioner in spite of order of the court, the judge added. PTI CORR CDN ANB ANB
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