In short
In DCIT, Central Circle-28 v. Rakesh Sharma (ITA Nos. 2911 to 2918/Del/2026 with C.O. Nos. 158 to 165/Del/2026, order of 19 August 2026), ITAT Delhi held that where the Assessing Officer of the searched person and of the other person is the same officer, the books and documents are to be treated as handed over under section 153C on the date of the order under section 127 centralising the other person's case, not on the later date on which that officer records his satisfaction. The third proviso to section 153B(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 — which governs a search executed in a financial year commencing on or after 1 April 2019 — allows the later of twelve months from the end of the financial year of the last authorisation and twelve months from the end of the financial year of the handing over. On a search of 18 October 2019 and a section 127 order of 11 August 2020, that produced 31 March 2022; the assessments framed on 31 March 2023 were quashed as time-barred and the merits left academic. The Tribunal reached this by applying Super Malls (P.) Ltd. v. PCIT (2020) 423 ITR 281 (SC), following its own orders in Sudhir Agrawal, from the same Alankit Group search, and Ajay Gupta, which arose from a different search. The Bombay High Court in Vijay Bihari Kandhari (17 November 2025) reached a pro-assessee result by a different route — holding that the second limb has no application at all where the officer is common, so that only the first limb runs — and the two routes do not always give the same answer.
Where one officer holds jurisdiction over the searched person and over the person assessed under section 153C, on what date does the twelve-month clock in the third proviso to section 153B(1) begin to run — the day the case is centralised by an order under section 127, or the later day that officer records his satisfaction? Nothing else in the file may matter. The gap between the two dates is routinely a year, and a year is the whole period.
ITAT Delhi answered it in August 2026 in DCIT, Central Circle-28, New Delhi v. Rakesh Sharma: the section 127 order. Cross objections allowed, section 153C assessments for AYs 2013-14 to 2020-21 quashed as time-barred, every remaining pleading on the merits expressly left academic. Eight assessment years, decided by the date on a transfer order.
The order is short on reasoning because it did not need much: it follows two earlier orders on the same point. The interest lies elsewhere — in the proviso the case is decided under, which has two limbs and is usually quoted with one; in the gap between what the Supreme Court decided in Super Malls and what the Tribunal has made of it; and in the fact that the Bombay High Court gets to the same destination by a route that does not always arrive at the same place.
Key points
- The third proviso to section 153B(1), inserted by the Finance Act 2017 with effect from 1 April 2017, governs a search executed in a financial year commencing on or after 1 April 2019. For the other person it gives the later of twelve months from the end of the financial year of the last authorisation and twelve months from the end of the financial year of the handing over under section 153C. Both limbs, and “whichever is later”, matter.
- ITAT Delhi held that where one officer assesses both persons, the handing over occurs on the date of the order under section 127 centralising the other person’s case — not on the later satisfaction note. Search 18 October 2019, section 127 order 11 August 2020, outer date 31 March 2022, assessments of 31 March 2023 quashed.
- Had the satisfaction note of 24 December 2021 been the trigger, the outer date would have been 31 March 2023 — the very day the orders were passed. One date decided eight years.
- Section 127 says nothing about records or seized material; its Explanation defines a “case” as proceedings. So the section 127 date is a deemed handing over, just as the satisfaction note would be. Both sides are arguing from a deeming, not from the text.
- The Bombay High Court in Vijay Bihari Kandhari takes a different route: where the officer is common there is no handing over, so the second limb drops out and only the first limb runs. That outer date is never later than the Delhi one, and is often earlier — so the order in which the two arguments are taken is not neutral.
- Super Malls decides that one satisfaction note suffices and that nothing need be transmitted to oneself. It does not decide when limitation begins. Circular No. 24/2015 confirms that satisfaction is still required where the officer is common — which answers the Revenue’s point without touching limitation.
What did ITAT Delhi decide in Rakesh Sharma?
A search under section 132 was carried out on the Alankit Group on 18 October 2019. Material said to pertain to Rakesh Sharma, who was not the searched person, was found. His case was centralised with the Assessing Officer of the searched person — the DCIT, Central Circle-28, New Delhi — by an order under section 127 dated 11 August 2020. The satisfaction note contemplated by section 153C was recorded on 24 December 2021. Notice under section 153C issued on 28 December 2021, and the assessments were framed on 31 March 2023.
The CIT(A)-27, New Delhi decided the appeals by a common order of 17 November 2025. The Revenue appealed on the merits; the assessee filed cross objections raising limitation. Before ITAT Delhi Bench ‘E’ — Mahavir Singh, Vice President, and Krinwant Sahay, Accountant Member — the assessee took the limitation point at the outset, and it disposed of everything.
The Tribunal’s own reasoning occupies two paragraphs. Since the order under section 127 was passed on 11 August 2020, the assessment should have been completed on or before 31 March 2022; it was framed on 31 March 2023; and, “keeping in view of the Hon’ble Supreme Court decision in the case of Super Malls Private Limited v. PCIT (423 ITR 281) the date of passing of the order u/s.127 of the IT Act is to be taken into consideration”. It then adopted judicial consistency with two coordinate-bench orders — one of them arising from the same Alankit search, the other from a different search on the same reasoning — noting that the Revenue “could not point out any specific distinction on facts or on legal issues”.
Cross objections 158 to 165/Del/2026 were allowed, the assessments quashed, and the Revenue’s appeals in ITA Nos. 2911 to 2918/Del/2026 dismissed as infructuous. Everything on the merits was left where it stood.
What does the third proviso to section 153B(1) actually say?
Most summaries of this line of cases quote half of it. The full text, so far as it matters here, is this:
Provided also that in the case where the last of the authorisations for search under section 132 or for requisition under section 132A was executed during the financial year commencing on or after the 1st day of April, 2019,— … (ii) the period of limitation for making the assessment or reassessment in case of other person referred to in section 153C, shall be the period of twelve months from the end of the financial year in which the last of the authorisations for search under section 132 or for requisition under section 132A was executed or twelve months from the end of the financial year in which books of account or documents or assets seized or requisitioned are handed over under section 153C to the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over such other person, whichever is later.
Three things follow, and they are routinely lost.
First, it is the third proviso, and it was inserted by the Finance Act 2017 with effect from 1 April 2017 — not, as is sometimes written, by a 2019 Finance Act. The first proviso is the general nine-month rule for the other person; the second deals with a search executed in FY 2018-19; the third with FY 2019-20 onwards; the fourth and fifth extend time where a transfer pricing reference is made; the sixth fixes a single outer date of 30 September 2022 for AY 2021-22 where the search or the handing over fell in FY 2020-21.
Second, there are two limbs, not one, and the assessment is due on the later of them. An argument built only on the handing-over limb is incomplete, and on some chronologies it is worse for the assessee than the full proviso.
Third, the operative expression is “handed over”. Section 153B(1) never uses the word “satisfied” or “satisfaction” anywhere. Section 153C(1), by contrast, uses both, and keeps them apart in sequence: the Assessing Officer of the searched person is satisfied that the material pertains to another person; the material shall be handed over to the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over that person; and that officer proceeds if he is satisfied that the material has a bearing on that person’s total income. The legislature had two events available and attached limitation to one of them. That is the textual foundation of the assessee’s case, and it is a good one.
Why does the handing-over date decide this case?
Because on these facts the two candidate dates fall in different financial years, and the difference is exactly twelve months.
| Candidate handing-over date | Financial year | Twelve months from its end | Assessment of 31 March 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section 127 order, 11 August 2020 | 2020-21 | 31 March 2022 | Time-barred by one year |
| Satisfaction note, 24 December 2021 | 2021-22 | 31 March 2023 | In time, on the last day |
The first limb is not in contention on this chronology: the last authorisation was executed in FY 2019-20, so twelve months from the end of that year is 31 March 2021, which is earlier than either figure in the table. The later of the two limbs therefore falls to be taken from the second, and the second turns on a single date in a single document.
That is worth pausing on. The Department’s own file produced both dates. The section 127 order sat at pages 314 to 316 of the paper book in the companion case; the satisfaction note at pages 184 to 207. Neither was disputed. Eight assessment years were decided not by any contest about what the seized material showed, but by which of two dates already on the record the statute selects.
Where does section 127 come into it?
Nowhere, on the face of the section — and this is the part of the reasoning that deserves scrutiny rather than applause.
Section 127 is headed “Power to transfer cases”. It empowers the named authorities to transfer a case from one Assessing Officer to another after giving the assessee a reasonable opportunity of being heard, wherever it is possible to do so, and after recording reasons. Sub-section (4) provides that a transfer may be made at any stage of the proceedings and does not require the re-issue of any notice already issued. The Explanation defines “case” as
all proceedings under this Act in respect of any year which may be pending on the date of such order or direction or which may have been completed on or before such date, and includes also all proceedings under this Act which may be commenced after the date of such order or direction in respect of any year.
Nothing in section 127 — not a sub-section, not the Explanation — mentions records, books of account, documents, assets, or seized material. A section 127 order transfers proceedings. It is not, in terms, a handing over of anything under section 153C.
So the Delhi view is not reading the statute literally either. It is saying that where the officer who holds the seized material is the very officer on whom jurisdiction over the other person is conferred, the statutory event of handing over is spent the moment that jurisdiction attaches — because there is then nobody left to hand anything to. The written submission in the case put this as a godown analogy: when charge of a godown passes, the goods inside pass into the transferee’s custody on the date of transfer, not on the later date when he gets round to counting them; stock-taking is verification, not the vesting event.
It is a good analogy, and it is an analogy. The point to hold onto is that both competing dates are deemed dates. The satisfaction note is no more a “handing over” than the section 127 order is. What the case is really asking is which deeming the third proviso will bear — and the answer to that is driven less by the text than by the second argument in the written submission, which is the stronger one.
Can limitation start on a date the Department chooses?
That argument runs as follows. Limitation exists to impose a mandatory outer boundary on the exercise of State power. A boundary of that kind must be capable of objective ascertainment and must not sit in the hands of the very authority whose power it constrains. If the commencement of limitation were tied to the date on which the Assessing Officer records his satisfaction, he would need only to defer recording it in order to defer, indefinitely, the start of the period that binds him.
On the facts this was not hypothetical. On the Revenue’s own record the material pertaining to the assessee lay with the Central Circle from 11 August 2020 until 24 December 2021 — over sixteen months — before any satisfaction was recorded. If a delay occasioned entirely by the Department can push back the commencement of limitation, then in every case of centralisation under section 127 to the officer who conducted the search, the twelve-month period ceases to be a period of limitation in any meaningful sense.
This is the argument that carries the weight, and it is an argument about the purpose of a limitation provision rather than about the meaning of “handed over”. Whether it survives in a High Court is another matter; the Madras High Court in LKS Gold House (P.) Ltd. v. DCIT (18 January 2024) held squarely that there is no time limit prescribed for issuing a satisfaction note under section 153C, which is the Revenue’s answer to it and has not been displaced.
Is Super Malls authority for when limitation begins?
Not as such, and the distinction is worth keeping clean because both sides in this line of cases lean on it.
Super Malls (P.) Ltd. v. PCIT (2020) 423 ITR 281 (SC), decided on 5 March 2020, was about whether the requirements of section 153C had been complied with. At paragraph 6.1 the Supreme Court set out the two eventualities. Where the Assessing Officers differ, the searched person’s officer must record satisfaction, transmit the documents and forward his note. Where they are the same,
it is sufficient by the Assessing Officer to note in the satisfaction note that the documents seized from the searched person belonged to the other person. Once the note says so, then the requirement of Section 153C of the Act is fulfilled … The second requirement of transmitting the documents so seized from the searched person would not be there as he himself will be the Assessing Officer of the searched person and the other person and therefore there is no question of transmitting such seized documents to himself.
The Court added that the single officer “must be conscious and satisfied that the documents seized/recovered from the searched person belonged to the other person”.
Read as it stands, that is a holding about jurisdiction: what has to happen before a section 153C notice can issue. It says the transmission requirement falls away; it does not say what date the third proviso to section 153B(1) fixes. The Tribunal’s step — from “there is nothing to transmit” to “limitation therefore ran from the section 127 order” — is an inference, and a reasonable one, but it should be described as an inference. A submission that says “the Supreme Court has held that limitation runs from the section 127 order” will not survive a bench that reads the judgment.
The Revenue’s mirror-image error is the same one. Its submission was that recording satisfaction is “a substantive jurisdictional condition precedent and not a mere procedural formality” and cannot be dispensed with merely because the officers coincide. That is correct — CBDT Circular No. 24/2015 dated 31 December 2015 says so in terms, directing that “even if the AO of the searched person and the ‘other person’ is one and the same, then also he is required to record his satisfaction”. But it is an answer to a case nobody was making. The assessee never argued that satisfaction was unnecessary. He argued that it was not the event limitation runs from. The Circular confirms the first proposition and is silent on the second.
Does the Bombay High Court get there the same way?
No — and this is the most useful thing in the whole line of cases, because the two routes do not always meet.
In Vijay Bihari Kandhari v. ACIT (Writ Petition No. 2764 of 2022, decided 17 November 2025, [2025] 181 taxmann.com 21), the Bombay High Court considered a search on Oberoi Realty of 21 August 2019 which threw up material relating to the petitioner, with the same officer on both sides. The Court held that where the Assessing Officer of the searched person and of the other person is one and the same, there is no question of handing over or transmitting anything to oneself, and therefore the second limb of the third proviso has no application at all. What survives is the first limb — twelve months from the end of the financial year in which the search was conducted. Applying the relaxation notifications made under the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020, the Court took the outer date to 30 September 2021 and quashed the section 153C proceedings for AYs 2014-15 to 2019-20.
The special leave petition against that judgment — ACIT v. Vijay Bihari Kandhari, SLP (Civil) Diary No. 44084 of 2026 — was dismissed on 24 August 2026, five days after Rakesh Sharma was pronounced, the Court recording that it found no good ground to interfere under Article 136. That leaves the Bombay judgment standing. It does not make it a decision of the Supreme Court, and it should not be cited as one.
The difference between the two routes is structural. Bombay removes the second limb; Delhi relocates it, from the satisfaction note to the section 127 order. Since a centralisation order almost always post-dates the search, relocating the limb produces a date that is later than, or at best equal to, the date the first limb produces on its own.
When do the two routes give different answers?
Take a search executed on 15 May 2019, a section 127 order of 20 June 2020, and a satisfaction note of 5 January 2022.
| Route | Reasoning | Outer date |
|---|---|---|
| Bombay (Kandhari) | Second limb inapplicable; first limb only — twelve months from the end of FY 2019-20 | 31 March 2021, subject to the relaxation notifications |
| Delhi (Rakesh Sharma) | Later of first limb and second limb, the latter run from the section 127 order in FY 2020-21 | 31 March 2022 |
| Revenue | Later of first limb and second limb, the latter run from the satisfaction note in FY 2021-22 | 31 March 2023 |
An assessment framed on 20 February 2022 is quashed on the Bombay route, sustained on the Delhi route, and sustained on the Revenue’s. The three positions are not two positions.
Where the section 127 order falls in the same financial year as the search — centralisation at the time of the search, which is common in group cases — the two routes converge, because twelve months from the end of that one financial year is the same date under either. Where centralisation is late, they diverge sharply: a section 127 order in FY 2022-23 would give the Department until 31 March 2024 on the Delhi route, and nothing at all beyond 31 March 2021 on the Bombay route.
On the facts of Rakesh Sharma itself the divergence was invisible, because the assessment of 31 March 2023 was out of time on both. That is why the Tribunal never had to choose. It is also why the order does not settle the question it appears to settle.
How much weight does this order carry?
Less than the headline suggests, and it is worth being accurate about that.
Rakesh Sharma follows Sudhir Agrawal v. DCIT (ITA Nos. 3823 to 3830/Del/2026, ITAT Delhi Bench ‘F’, 27 July 2026) and Ajay Gupta v. DCIT (ITA No. 5149/Del/2025, ITAT Delhi Bench ‘E’, 16 February 2026). Sudhir Agrawal arises from the same Alankit search of 18 October 2019, with a section 127 order of 20 October 2020 and assessments of 30 March 2023. Ajay Gupta is the independent one: a search on the Hans Group on 6 January 2021, a section 127 order of 14 February 2022, a satisfaction note of 28 June 2022 and an assessment of 16 March 2024, quashed on the same reasoning.
It is worth noting how the material reaches the reader, because it affects the count. Rakesh Sharma does not quote Sudhir Agrawal directly; it quotes a further coordinate-bench order in the case of two other assessees of the same group (ITA Nos. 3461 to 3464 and 3466 to 3468/Del/2026), which itself reproduces Sudhir Agrawal. So the same reasoning has now been applied at least four times, three of them on the Alankit search, and each application adopts the one before it rather than re-examining the point.
That is one Delhi view repeated, resting on the Bombay High Court in Kandhari and on an inference from Super Malls. The Bombay route, by contrast, has travelled on its own: ITAT Hyderabad in Expressway Services (P.) Ltd. v. DCIT (ITA Nos. 484 to 486/Hyd/2025, 27 March 2026) followed Kandhari, applied the first limb alone and held an assessment of 28 March 2022 time-barred where the search concluded on 12 February 2020. So only one High Court has decided the point, and no High Court has yet adopted the Delhi reasoning specifically.
Two further observations on the record in this case. The Revenue relied on an Ahmedabad Tribunal order — Dilip Prasad, ACIT v. Alap Somabhai Patel [2026] 186 taxmann.com 922 (Ahmedabad-Trib.), 14 May 2026, as cited in the order — said to hold that proceedings were not barred merely because the Assessing Officer was common, and submitted that it had “set aside” the Bombay High Court’s judgment in Kandhari. A Tribunal cannot set aside a High Court judgment; at most a bench may decline to follow a decision of a High Court other than the one to which it is subordinate. That submission should not have been made in those terms, and the Tribunal did not act on it. The order could not be retrieved from the freely available reports consulted for this note, so what follows rests on the Revenue’s own description of it in the judgment; on that description, the proposition attributed to it — that satisfaction must still be recorded where the officer is common — is Super Malls and the Circular, and does not answer the limitation question at all.
The second observation is that the Tribunal did not engage with the Revenue’s authorities at all. Super Malls, LKS Gold House, Bhupinder Singh Kapur, Indian National Congress v. DCIT and the Ahmedabad order were all placed before it in the departmental written submission, and none of them is discussed in the operative paragraphs. That is the consequence of deciding by judicial consistency within a search group: it produces a correct result quickly and a thin ratio. A different bench, on a different search, with the Revenue’s authorities properly answered, could go elsewhere.
Is there a second attack on the same chronology?
Usually, and it rests on different authority — which matters, because the High Courts are openly divided on it.
The gap here between the search on 18 October 2019 and the satisfaction note of 24 December 2021 was over twenty-six months. Calcutta Knitwears holds that the satisfaction note may be prepared at the time of or along with initiation of proceedings against the searched person, along with the assessment proceedings, or immediately after they are completed. (The familiar formulation “in the course of the assessment proceedings” is the Board’s paraphrase in Circular No. 24/2015, not the Supreme Court’s own words, which are “along with the assessment proceedings”; quote whichever you are citing, and do not blend them.) Whether a gap of that length offends the “immediately after” limb depends on when the searched person’s assessments were completed, which this order does not record — so the point could not be assessed from the face of it.
Where it can be assessed, the authority splits:
- Gujarat High Court, Parag Rameshbhai Gathani v. ITO (18 November 2025): a satisfaction note twenty-two months after completion of the searched person’s assessment was quashed; “immediate” cannot be stretched so far as to defeat the expeditious completion of search assessments. The Court expressly declined to apply the Punjab and Haryana view.
- Bombay High Court, Rajib Mukhopadhyay v. DCIT (24 June 2026): a ten-month gap was fatal; the note must be recorded “immediately”, not within a “reasonable time”. The Court noted the conflict and preferred the stricter view.
- Punjab and Haryana High Court, Bhupinder Singh Kapur v. ITO (6 November 2024): “immediately after” cannot be read as a day or two; the officer must be allowed time to examine the documents and pass a reasoned order, and a gap of about nine months was accepted. The special leave petition was dismissed on 24 January 2025 ([2025] 175 taxmann.com 690 (SC)). Cite the judgment as the High Court’s: a threshold dismissal leaves it standing, but on Kunhayammed v. State of Kerala it does not by itself become a declaration of law under Article 141.
- Madras High Court, LKS Gold House (18 January 2024): no time limit is prescribed for the satisfaction note at all.
For a matter before the Ahmedabad benches, Parag Rameshbhai Gathani is the governing High Court view, and it is the stricter one. That is a different starting point from the one a Delhi or Chennai practitioner works from on the same facts.
One related point worth having in reserve: the Gujarat High Court in Swagat Infrastructure (P.) Ltd. v. DCIT held that section 153(6)(i) cannot be used to extend the limitation prescribed by section 153B, the two being distinct provisions with their own periods. That is the answer to a common Departmental argument in appeal-effect situations.
What does this mean in practice?
The chronology is the case. Before any of the above can be argued, four dates and four documents have to be on the record, and three of them are in the Department’s custody rather than the assessee’s:
- The panchnama fixing the date on which the last authorisation was executed. The first limb runs from the end of that financial year, and it is the limb that cannot be displaced by anything the Department does later.
- The order under section 127, with its date and the reasons recorded. If it is to carry the weight the Delhi line puts on it, it has to be produced — in the companion case the order sat in the paper book at identified folios, which is why the point could be decided on the papers without any further enquiry.
- The satisfaction note, with the date it was recorded and, if possible, the date the searched person’s assessments were completed. The first gives the Revenue’s candidate date; the second is what the “immediately after” ground needs.
- The section 153C notice and the assessment order, for the outer figure.
Two drafting points follow from the analysis above. First, take the Kandhari ground first and the Delhi ground in the alternative, not the other way round: the Bombay route yields an outer date that is never later and is often earlier, so leading with the Delhi route concedes up to a year for nothing. Second, plead the proviso in full. A ground that recites only the handing-over limb invites the answer that the first limb has been ignored, and on some chronologies the first limb is the better of the two.
Finally, the limitation ground and the satisfaction-delay ground are independent and should be pleaded as such. They fail on different facts and succeed on different authority, and a bench that is unpersuaded by the deeming argument may still be troubled by a note recorded two years after the search.
Does any of this survive into the block assessment scheme?
Not in this form, which is why the point has a shelf life.
Section 153C(3), inserted by the Finance Act 2021 with effect from 1 April 2021, provides that nothing in the section applies to a search initiated under section 132, or books, documents or assets requisitioned under section 132A, on or after that date. Section 153A(1) reaches the same result differently — its opening words confine it to a search initiated or a requisition made on or before 31 March 2021 — and section 153B(4) does the same for the limitation provision. So this dispute belongs to searches initiated up to 31 March 2021 — a closed set, but a large one, and much of it still in first and second appeal. In those matters the point is available now, on documents already on the file, and it does not depend on anything further happening.
For what came afterwards, the anchor has moved. Under the revived block assessment scheme in Chapter XIV-B of the 1961 Act, applicable to searches from 1 September 2024, section 158BE(1) gives twelve months from the end of the quarter in which the last authorisation was executed. Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, applicable to searches initiated on or after 1 April 2026, section 296(1) gives eighteen months from the end of the quarter in which the search was initiated, with a capped exclusion of up to 180 days for the period until the seized material reaches the jurisdictional Assessing Officer (section 296(3)). In both, limitation is tied to the search rather than to a handover, and the Department’s own delay is confined to a stated number of days instead of setting the clock’s starting point.
Whether the “other person” provisions in the new scheme reproduce the problem in another form is a question the first block assessments will put; the architecture suggests not, but the first appeals under it have yet to be decided. For now, Rakesh Sharma is a reminder of something more general than its own subject: that the date a document bears is frequently worth more in an appeal than anything written inside it.
Provisions cited are the Income-tax Act, 1961 as in force for a search initiated on 18 October 2019, and the Income-tax Act, 2025, as published on incometaxindia.gov.in and read in September 2026. See also the site’s pages on section 153C, section 153A, section 132 and the block assessment scheme. Income-tax Act, 1961: section 127, section 132, section 153A, section 153B and section 153C (the Department’s own section pages for these two currently serve superseded text — for the third proviso to section 153B(1) see clause 61 of the Finance Act, 2017, and for the sunset in sections 153A, 153B(4) and 153C(3) see the Finance Act, 2021), section 158BE. Income-tax Act, 2025: section 296. Judgments and circular: Super Malls (P.) Ltd. v. PCIT (2020) 423 ITR 281 (SC), 5 March 2020; CIT v. Calcutta Knitwears (2014) 362 ITR 673 (SC), 12 March 2014; CIT v. Jasjit Singh 2023 INSC 882 / (2023) 458 ITR 437 (SC), 26 September 2023; CIT v. RRJ Securities Ltd. [2015] 62 taxmann.com 391 (Delhi) / (2016) 380 ITR 612; CIT v. Sinhgad Technical Education Society (2017) 397 ITR 344 (SC); Vijay Bihari Kandhari v. ACIT, W.P. No. 2764 of 2022 (Bombay), 17 November 2025; ACIT v. Vijay Bihari Kandhari, SLP (C) Diary No. 44084 of 2026 (SC), 24 August 2026; LKS Gold House (P.) Ltd. v. DCIT (Madras), 18 January 2024; Bhupinder Singh Kapur v. ITO (P&H), 6 November 2024, SLP (C) No. 1352 of 2025 dismissed 24 January 2025; Parag Rameshbhai Gathani v. ITO (Gujarat), 18 November 2025; Rajib Mukhopadhyay v. DCIT (Bombay), 24 June 2026; Indian National Congress v. DCIT [2024] 160 taxmann.com 606 (Delhi), 22 March 2024; Expressway Services (P.) Ltd. v. DCIT, ITA Nos. 484 to 486/Hyd/2025 (ITAT Hyderabad), 27 March 2026; Sudhir Agrawal v. DCIT, ITA Nos. 3823 to 3830/Del/2026 (ITAT Delhi), 27 July 2026; Ajay Gupta v. DCIT, ITA No. 5149/Del/2025 (ITAT Delhi), 16 February 2026; CBDT Circular No. 24/2015 dated 31 December 2015. Read the order (PDF, 26 pages).
This note is general commentary on the law as at 16 September 2026 and is not advice on any matter. The position in a particular case depends on its own facts.