In her budget speech 2024, finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman said, “To dispose of the backlog of first appeals, I plan to deploy more officers to hear and decide such appeals, especially those with large tax effect.”

As per the Central Action Plan (Financial year 2024-25), the approximate pendency as of April 1, 2024 was 3.01 lakh appeals (that were filed before April 1, 2022) at the level of CIT (Appeals). The aggregate number of appeals to be disposed of as of March 31, 2024 were 5.49 lakh.

The government has taken several steps to ease litigation. Budget 2024, announced an increase in the threshold limits for filing of appeals by the Income-tax (I-T) department, plan for increasing the strength of Appellate Commissioners to reduce the backlog of appeals, and introduction of Vivad Se Vishwas Scheme to settle pending appeals. But a lot more could be done, especially to improve the Faceless Appeals Scheme and suggestions are pouring in from various trade associations and tax experts.