The Supreme Court Tuesday said it would hear final arguments on December 4 on the pleas filed by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict in a case related to re-opening of their 2011-12 tax assessments.
The apex court, which observed that the matter required "consideration", did not issue formal notice on the petitions filed by Rahul, Sonia and veteran Congress leader Oscar Fernandes as the Income Tax Department was represented by its counsel.
"Since the respondent (I-T department) has put in appearance, we are not issuing a formal notice. However, we are fixing the matter for final arguments on December 4," said a bench of Justices A K Sikri and S Abdul Nazeer.
Rahul, Sonia and Fernandes have challenged the September 10 judgement of the high court which had refused to give them relief in the case, giving opportunity to the I-T Department to scrutinise their records.
The matter is linked to the National Herald case in which the Congress leaders are also facing a criminal case.
During the hearing in the apex court, senior advocates P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar appeared for the petitioners, while Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta was representing the I-T department.
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Chidambaram started his submissions by giving the background leading to the income tax case.
To this, the bench said: "We are not concerned with the background of these proceedings but the question here is about the notice (issued by the I-T department) of the re-assessment of income tax. The issue is whether the notice is valid or not. You can raise this before the assessing officer".
Chidambaram said the question was whether the reasons given in the notice were right or not.
He said that Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper, had decided to issue nine lakh shares to Young Indian (YI), a not-for-profit organisation, and convert them into equity.
He said that some of the shares were acquired by the petitioners.
Chidambaram said YI also acquired AJL's debt of Rs 90.2 crore and this does not give rise to any income in the hands of the Gandhis and Fernandes.
"We (petitioners) were shareholders. It can never give rise to income in my hands. We do not get any income," he said.
At this juncture, the bench told Mehta, "It (matter) requires consideration."
"Second option is that we will hear the matter after two weeks and you all can assist us. The high court judgment is lengthy."