Parties are bound by an approved resolution plan, rendering related tax-demand writs unnecessary to decide.

Aircel Limited and Aircel Cellular Limited filed six writ petitions concerning their income-tax returns for Assessment Year 2008–09.

In W.P. Nos. 5193 and 5196 of 2010, they challenged intimations under Section 143(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, and related issues concerning the timing of filing their returns and deductions under Section 80-IA.

The assessing officer subsequently made scrutiny assessments dated 31 December 2010; no statutory appeals or separate writ petitions challenging those assessments had been filed, and the demands were kept in abeyance pending these proceedings.

In the interim, CIRP had been initiated against both companies before the NCLT, Mumbai, which formulated a resolution plan dated 29 December 2018.

The other four petitions challenged Section 80-AC and the authority to prescribe a time limit for verification of Form ITR-V under the Electronic Furnishing of Return of Income Scheme, 2007.

Whether the challenges to the Section 143(1) intimations and related tax demands required determination in light of the resolution plan formulated in the companies’ CIRP.

Whether the Court should determine the challenges to Section 80-AC and to the prescribed time limit for verification of Form ITR-V.

The Court relied on Ghanshyam Mishra and Sons Private Limited v. Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company Limited, 2021 (9) SCC 657, in recording that the parties were bound by the terms of the resolution plan.

The petitions also raised issues under Sections 80-AC, 80-IA and 139(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, and the Electronic Furnishing of Return of Income Scheme, 2007; however, the Court did not decide the merits or state a substantive rule on those provisions.

The Court noted that scrutiny assessments had been made after the filing of the writ petitions and that the petitioners had not separately challenged those assessments.

It then took account of the CIRP and the resolution plan, and, applying the principle in Ghanshyam Mishra, recorded that the parties were bound by that plan.

In those circumstances, it considered it unnecessary to decide the merits of W.P. Nos. 5193 and 5196.

As to the remaining petitions, the petitioners did not seriously pursue them in light of the Court’s disposal of the first two petitions; the Court therefore closed them without deciding the underlying statutory challenges.

No costs were ordered.

The Court did not adjudicate the substantive validity of the assessments, Section 80-AC, or the ITR-V verification time limit.