ITAT mulls video-courts to help tackle issue of pendency

Circuit benches of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) will hold regular sittings at Guwahati, Coimbatore, and Madurai. ITAT has proposed setting up of video courts in these cities to go with such video courts already functional at Rajkot, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Raipur and Surat, Dev Darshan Sud, president, ITAT and former judge, Himachal Pradesh HC said. The video courts in part of ITATs endeavor to provide speedy justice to appellants, he noted.

Inaugurating ITAT circuit bench in association with Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Mangaluru branch of SIRC of the ICAI on Monday, Sud said ITAT is striving to provide easy, speedy and cheaper justice to all stakeholders. "Our focus is on South India, especially Tamil Nadu and Karnataka," he said adding this is one of the primary reasons to set up video-courts at Madurai and Coimbatore. Till such time, the circuit benches will hold regular sittings, he said.

ITAT made a start in Karnataka holding a circuit bench at Mysuru in December, he said adding the tribunal has followed it up with a circuit bench in this coastal city. This will provide assesses, IT department, local bar associations to help the tribunal to dispose cases locally rather than make all stakeholders come to Bengaluru for the purpose. "It is also rather strange that a last circuit bench hearing of ITAT in Mangaluru was held nearly 18-years ago," Sud averred.

Narotham Mishra, principal commissioner of Income Tax said ITATs move to hold circuit bench hearings here is a great opportunity for local chartered accountants who hitherto had to outsource their appeals work to counterparts in Goa and Bengaluru. While IT department will strive to defend its appeals purely on merit, Mishra said such hearings will add to domain knowledge of CAs. The department will also file merit based appeals on a directive from the government, he added. #casansaar (PTI - Times of India)