Former Union Finance Minister and senior lawyer P Chidambaram appeared for Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh in the High Court of Himachal Pradesh. Chidambaram is pleading the appeals filed by Virbhadra Singh against the orders of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, in which the Tribunal had dismissed Virbhadra’s plea for filling revised income tax returns for year 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Earlier, Income tax department had rejected the revised income tax returns of Virbhadra Singh and his family members and ordered reopening of the assessment of tax returns filled by Virbhadra Singh and his family members during the period of 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12.
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) had dismissed Virbhadra Singh’s appeal filed against the I-T department’s move to reopen assessment of tax returns on December 8, 2016. As Chidambaram appeared in the High Court and sought admission of the appeal filed by Virbhadra Singh, the High Court fixed July 13 for the next hearing of the appeal.
The matter had gained limelight when Singh filed revised I-T returns for assessment years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11, wherein his income was showed increased by about 14 times from Rs 47.35 lakh to Rs 6.56 crore.
IT department had rejected to accept the revised tax returns and the matter gained political connotations, when Virbhadra termed the rejection of his appeal to be politically motivated.
In his reaction against the orders of ITAT, Virbhadra Singh had said “The Income tax Tribunal had been set up by Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley and in spite of four judges in the tribunal, two special judges were sent from Delhi to hear my case, thus the matter is politically motivated,”