COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX Vs. LEADER VALVES LTD.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) FOLLOWING questions of law have been referred for opinion of this Court by the Tribunal, Amritsar Bench, Amritsar, arising out of its order dt. 30th April, 1987 passed in ITA No. 283/Asr/1985, in respect of the asst. yr. 1981 -82:

(2.) WHETHER the Tribunal is right in law in holding that the interest under Section 215 of the IT Act, 1961 cannot be charged without proper direction in the body of assessment order when the charging of interest under section is mandatory ?

(3.) AS far as this question is concerned, contention of the learned Counsel for the Revenue is that the Tribunal had gone wrong in deleting the interest charged under Section 215 of the Act. The Tribunal while accepting the plea of the assessee held that calculation of interest by same official was not in conformity with law and not to be treated as part of the assessment order. In response thereto, learned Counsel for the assessee submitted that the question has become academic at present as in view of the final assessment framed, the amount of advance tax paid by the assessee had been found to be more than the tax payable at the time of* assessment. Accordingly, there would be no question of levy of interest at all. Since these facts are not borne out of the material on record in the paper book, we refrain ourselves from taking cognizance thereof. As far as legal issue is concerned, it could not be disputed that the same is covered by an earlier judgment of this Court in Vinod Khurana v. , wherein following judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Kalyan Kumar Ray v. : [1991]191ITR634(SC) , it was held that calculation of interest sent along with demand notice is part of the assessment process and valid. The relevant observations in Vinod Khurana's case (supra) are as under: