Artificial urgency: HC imposes Rs 25,000 cost on Anil Ambani for seeking swift hearing on I-T notice

The Bombay High Court has imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on industrialist Anil Ambani for seeking an urgent hearing of his petition challenging a notice issued to him by the Income Tax department in April 2022, noting it as an "artificial urgency". A division bench of Justices M S Sonak and Jitendra Jain remarked that the facility to seek urgent hearing cannot be invoked by creating such artificial urgency.

Besides, the challenge is only to a show cause notice, the bench stated in its March 27 order, a copy of which was made available on Wednesday.

The bench rejected Ambani's application for an urgent hearing of the petition and imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 that will have to be paid to the Tata Memorial Hospital within two weeks.

When the petition came up for hearing in the regular course on Tuesday (April 1), Ambani's counsel Rafiq Dada told the bench that on March 27, the tax department passed its order for the concerned assessment year.

He sought to withdraw the petition and informed the bench that the cost imposed by the bench earlier was deposited.

The bench on Tuesday accepted the statement and disposed of the plea as withdrawn.