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Details of the Appeal filed is as under:
Appeal No: Special Civil Application (SCA) 15075 of 2015
Petitioner: All Gujarat Federation of Tax Consultants (AGFTC) vs CBDT and Others
Category: Urgent Admission-Fresh Matters
Court No.: 7
Bench: Division Benach comprising Justice Harsha Devani and Justice A. G. Uraizee

17-09-2015 : Odds are in favour of the Appeal
Among the petitions filed for extension of due date of Tax Audit for AY 2015-16, the one at Gujarat High Court listed for hearing on 21-09-2015 seems to be most promising.

The argumets that lend support to the above hypothesis are:

(1) The petitioner i..e., All Gujarat Federation of tax Consultants (AGFTC) has also succeeded in a similar petition for AY 2014-15

(2) The High Court that gave the relief was the same, i.e. Hon’ble The Gujarat High Court.

(3) One of the Hon'ble Judges (Justice Harsha Devani) was also one of the Judges of the Benach which gave the relief last year.

(4) The petitioner is a trust registered under the provisions of the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950 and its members are various professionals from Gujarat engaged in the field of practicing taxation. One of the objectives of the trust is to represent the issues faced by the members before the concerned authorities and seek the resolution thereof. Therefore the axe of locus standi is not expected to cast a threat like in the Delhi High Court Petition.

(5) The circumstances of the current year are more or less same as those of last year. In AY 2014-15, final rectified and updated version of TAR was not made available till 20-08-2014 whereas in AY 2015-16 date for enabling e-filing of ITR-4 was 01-08-2015.

(6) In the last year, CBDT did not respond to the representations made to it on the extension by either acceding or refusing to the requests and this approach was severely criticized by the Court.  In the current year also CBDT decided to keep a mum on the representations except with the difference that a categorical refusal was made not earlier than 09-09-2015.

(7)  The probable ground of CBDT regarding the impact of extension on the tax collections has already been debated and taken care of by the Court last year. The Court had permitted that despite extension, interest u/s 234A for late filing of return would be still levied.