The Madras High Court on Monday granted two weeks’ time for the Income Tax Department to take out applications for bringing on record, the legal heirs of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, in a few wealth tax cases pending against her since 2008 and 2009, so that the dues could be demanded from them.
Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq accepted a request made by Karthik Ranganathan, standing counsel for the I-T Department, for a couple of weeks, to file appropriate applications since the High Court had declared her niece J. Deepa and nephew J. Deepak as legal heirs only in May 2020.
He said, though Jayalalithaa had died in December 2016, the department could not immediately take out applications for bringing the legal heirs on record since there was no clarity over who was the legal heir. Then, the Tahsildar concerned had not issued legal heirship certificates to Ms. Deepa and Mr. Deepak.
However, now that the court had declared the siblings to be the legal heirs, appropriate applications would be taken out, he said and urged the court to condone the delay in making such applications. Accepting his request for time, the judges asked him to ascertain whether any other proceeding regarding legal heirship was pending elsewhere.
“Is it your case that there are only two legal heirs?” Justice Mahadevan asked the standing counsel and permitted him to file the appropriate applications with documents to prove legal heirship.
