1 wp-10076-10 mmj IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY ORDINARY ORIGINAL CIVIL JURISDICTION WRIT PETITION NO.10076 OF 2010 Vodafone Essar Ltd. ..Petitioner Vs. The Union of India & ors. .. Respondents Mr. S.E.Dustoor Senior Counsel a/w Mr. Niraj Seth, Mr. Prakash Shah and Mr. Jas Sanghvi i/b PDS Lgal for the Petitioner Mr. B.M.Chatterjee a/w Mr. Suresh Kumar for the Respondent CORAM :- J.P.DEVADHAR & R.M.SAVANT,JJ. DATE :- 20th December 2010 P.C. 1 Mentioned. Not on Board. 2 Heard Learned Counsel for the parties. 3 Perused Petition 4 The only issue canvassed by the Counsel for the Petitioner is that, since the appeal filed by the Petitioner against the demand raised is heard by ITAT and the Judgment is awaited, till the order of the Tribunal is made available, the respondents should be restrained from taking any coercive action against the Petitioner. 5 In the present case, by an order dated 19-2-2009, the Assessing Officer raised demand of approximately Rs.42 crores for AY-2007-08, AY-2008-2009 and AY-2009-2010 under Section 201(1) of the Income Tax Act. Subsequently, the interest under Section 201(1A) of the Income Tax Act, was also demanded by an order dated 3-12-2009. The Appeal filed by the 2 wp-10076-10 Petitioner against the aforesaid orders were partly allowed by the CIT (A). Further Appeal filed by the Petitioner has been heard by the ITAT and the arguments were concluded on 4-11-2010 and the Judgment is awaited. Since the Respondents have sought to initiate recovery proceedings, the Petitioners have filed the present Petition. 6 Admittedly, stay has operating all these days and in the present case, the hearing of the Appeal before the ITAT is complete and only the order is awaited. In these circumstances, in our opinion, it would be just and proper to continue the stay till the order of the Tribunal is made available to the Petitioner and for some more period if the order of the Tribunal is against the Petitioner. Accordingly, we direct that the order dated 19-2-2009 and 3-12-2009 shall not be give effect to till the decision of the ITAT in the Appeal is communicated to the Petitioner and for a further period of 6 weeks thereafter. 7 It appears that the hearing of the Appeal before the Tribunal was delayed on account of the adjournment taken by the department on 5 occasions. In any event, since the hearing of the appeal is admittedly concluded on 4-11-2010, we hope that the Tribunal shall endeavour to deliver the judgment as expeditiously as possible. 8 The Writ Petition is accordingly disposed of in the above terms with no order as to costs. (R.M.SAVANT,J.) (J.P.DEVADHAR, J.)