Rohit Kumar Vs ITO (Delhi High Court)
Delhi High Court in Rohit Kumar v. ITO ruled that the Supreme Court’s decision in Union of India v. Rajeev Bansal (2024) does not affirm the authority of a Joint Commissioner to approve reassessment proceedings under Section 151 of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The Finance Act, 2021, amended Section 151 to restrict such approval powers to the Principal Chief Commissioner, Chief Commissioner, Principal Commissioner, or Commissioner. The court emphasized that under the amended law, reassessments initiated after four years from the end of the relevant assessment year require approval from these higher authorities. A division bench of Justices Yashwant Varma and Dharmesh Sharma clarified that the Rajeev Bansal case only addressed time frames for seeking approval under Section 151, without affirming the Joint Commissioner’s authority. The petitioner in this case challenged the reassessment proceedings on the grounds that approval by the Joint Commissioner was not legally valid. The court referenced its earlier judgment in Abhinav Jindal HUF v. CIT (2024), which outlined the statutory allocation of approval powers and excluded the Joint Commissioner from such authority for reassessments beyond the four-year threshold. The department’s contention that Abhinav Jindal was overruled by Rajeev Bansal was rejected, and the court reiterated that the latter judgment did not validate Joint Commissioner approvals. Consequently, the reassessment proceedings were quashed.
