Nothing to Cure When Notice Is Issued to a Dead Person

A reassessment notice issued to a dead man, the four provisions the department invoked to save it, and a court that ended by writing to the Ministry of Finance.

That a notice under Section 148 issued in the name of a deceased assessee is void ab initio is not new law. It has been held so by the Madras High Court in Alamelu Veerappan v. ITO, (2018) 12 ITR-OL 95 (Mad), by the Delhi High Court in Savita Kapila v. ACIT, (2020) 426 ITR 502 (Del), and twice by the Bombay High Court in Sumit Balkrishna Gupta v. ACIT, (2019) 414 ITR 292 (Bom) and Devendra v. Addl. CIT, (2024) 461 ITR 463 (Bom).

Therefore, reading the recent decision of the Allahabad High Court in Smt. Asha Dubey v. Union of India [Writ Tax No. 571 of 2026, Lucknow Bench, decided on July 21, 2026] only for that proposition would be to read it for the least interesting thing in it.

The interest lies in what came after. The department did not defend the notice on one footing. It defended it on four, invoking Section 159, Section 292B, Section 292BB and Section 150(1) in succession, each intended to do slightly different work. The Court rejected all four contentions. Reading why it refused each, and how the four differ, is worth more to a litigator than the headline is.

The Facts

The assessee, a serving government officer, had purchased a flat in October 2020, paying his share through banking channels. A search on the developer group in April 2021 threw up an alleged cash payment attributed to him. He died in January 2024. In March 2025, after approval from the Principal Commissioner, a notice under Section 148 was issued for Assessment Year 2021-22—in his name.

His widow replied, informing the department of his death and objecting that proceedings against a dead person were void. The objection was rejected, her name was substituted mid-proceeding, and an assessment order followed, adding a little over Rs. 69 lakh and raising a demand of nearly Rs. 40 lakh.

Two facts are important to note. The department was informed of the death in express terms, but it continued the proceedings in the deceased’s name. Further, the widow, after returning from abroad following the funeral, had a return filed for Assessment Year 2024-25 in her late husband’s name, verified through his Aadhaar authentication.

The Court records both facts. It criticises the first and, in its epilogue, states plainly that the second was itself an illegal act. She won nonetheless, and the reason she won is the substance of the case.

Door One: Section 159 and What a Continuity Provision Cannot Do

The department’s first argument was the most natural one. Section 159 makes the legal representative liable for the tax that the deceased would have paid and permits proceedings to be taken against the legal representative. If the statute contemplates recovery from the estate, why should a notice issued in the deceased’s name not simply be read as a notice to the estate?

The answer lies in the structure of the provision.

Proceedings Initiated During the Assessee’s Lifetime

Section 159(2)(a) allows a proceeding already taken against the deceased during his lifetime to be continued against the legal representative from the stage at which it stood.

Fresh Proceedings After the Assessee’s Death

Section 159(2)(b) allows a proceeding to be taken against the legal representative which could have been taken against the deceased had he survived.

The first situation requires valid initiation before death. The second requires fresh initiation against the legal representative within the limitation prescribed by Section 149.

Here, there was neither. The notice was issued after the assessee’s death, and no notice was ever issued to the widow within the prescribed limitation period.

The distinction worth writing in the margin is this:

Section 159 is a provision of continuity, not of validation. It identifies the person against whom an existing liability may be enforced; it does not make a proceeding that never validly began effective as though it had. A machinery provision presupposes something upon which the machinery can operate.

Door Two: Section 292B and the Limits of a Curative Provision

Section 292B provides that a notice shall not be invalid merely because of any mistake, defect or omission in it. However, its protection is expressly confined to a notice that is in substance and effect in conformity with or according to the intent and purpose of the Act.

That qualification is the whole point of the provision, and it is routinely ignored.

A Jurisdictional Failure Is Not a Clerical Defect

A notice issued to a dead person does not fail the provision by a narrow margin. It fails at the threshold.

The Court’s reasoning—and that of the Bombay High Court before it in Sumit Balkrishna Gupta—is that the issue of a notice under Section 148 is the foundation of reassessment. Issuing it to the correct person is not merely a procedural requirement; it is a condition precedent to the assumption of jurisdiction.

What is defective, therefore, is not merely the notice. It is the assumption of jurisdiction that the notice was meant to accomplish.

An ordinary comparison is exact enough to be useful. Section 292B may correct what is written on an envelope—a misspelt name, an incorrect ward or a clerical slip in the description. It cannot supply the existence of a proper taxpayer.

Where the person named has no legal existence, there is no defect in the writing to correct. There is nobody at the other end. As the Court observed, a dead person can neither receive a notice, file a reply, appear before an authority nor challenge an order.

Section 292B cures a defect in a notice. It does not cure the absence of a person to whom a notice may lawfully be given.

Door Three: Section 292BB and an Estoppel That Does Not Travel

The department’s third argument was the most tempting because it drew upon the widow’s own conduct.

Section 292BB deems a notice to have been duly served where the assessee has cooperated in the proceeding and has not objected before completion of the assessment. The widow had, according to the department, filed a return in the deceased’s name using his authentication and engaged with the proceedings. She should not, therefore, be heard to contend that the notice was invalid.

The Court rejected this argument on two independent grounds. They should be kept separate because they operate differently.

A Legal Representative Is Not the “Assessee” Under Section 292BB

The first ground is textual and follows the Delhi High Court’s decisions in Savita Kapila and Rajender Kumar Sehgal v. ITO, (2019) 414 ITR 286 (Del).

Section 292BB speaks of the assessee. A legal representative is not the assessee. The estoppel created by the provision, in the Allahabad High Court’s phrase, operates within the fringes of its own language and not beyond it.

A statutory estoppel is a creature of its words. It cannot be extended to catch a person whom the legislature did not name.

Participation Cannot Confer Jurisdiction

The second ground is a proposition of general law and is the more powerful of the two:

Jurisdiction cannot be conferred by consent, waiver, acquiescence or estoppel. If the notice was void, no amount of participation by any person can make it valid because participation supplies willingness—not authority.

The Court also affirmed, following Savita Kapila, that there is no statutory obligation on a legal heir to intimate the assessee’s death to the department. Consequently, the department’s complaint that it had not been informed—which was factually weaker here because it was eventually informed—could not convert a void notice into a valid one.

Conduct in a Different Assessment Year

One further point should be marked in the margin, although the judgment does not itself emphasise it.

The return said to have misled the department was filed for Assessment Year 2024-25. The year reopened was Assessment Year 2021-22. Whatever may be said about the propriety of that return—and the Court says a good deal—the conduct relied upon to estop the widow occurred in a different assessment year from the one in which jurisdiction was being assumed.

That distinction is worth having in hand when the department relies upon an assessee’s conduct as an answer to a jurisdictional objection.

Door Four: Section 150(1) and the Point That Decides the Future

The first three doors decide the validity of the notice. The fourth decides whether the department may begin again. It is the one a practitioner should read most carefully.

Section 149 prescribes the outer time limit for issuing a notice under Section 148. Section 150(1) lifts that limitation where reassessment is required to give effect to a finding or direction contained in an order passed by an authority in appeal, reference or revision, or by a court in a proceeding under another law.

The department’s argument was ingenious: if the High Court quashed the notice as void, that order would itself constitute a finding, and the limitation bar would accordingly fall away, permitting a fresh notice to be issued to the widow even now.

The Court rejected this argument, and its reasoning is precise.

Quashing a Void Notice Is Not a Finding or Direction

An order that does no more than declare that a notice was void ab initio is not a “finding” or “direction” within Section 150(1).

Where the notice was void, no valid proceeding was ever pending before the Court, and there was nothing upon which a finding for reassessment could operate. The order was, in the Court’s words, simply a reassertion that the initiation was void.

The Revenue could not be permitted to derive a benefit from its own jurisdictional transgression.

Section 150(2) Independently Preserves the Limitation Bar

Section 150(2) reinforced the conclusion independently by denying the benefit of Section 150(1) where the relevant assessment year had already become time-barred when the order relied upon was made.

The consequence is the practical heart of the case.

The proper course under Section 159(2)(b) was to issue a fresh notice to the legal representative within the period prescribed by Section 149. That was not done, the limitation period had expired, and the assessment was therefore not merely set aside but foreclosed.

This is the difference between a defect that buys the assessee time and a defect that terminates the matter permanently.

Ashish Agarwal Did Not Cure the Jurisdictional Defect

The department also relied upon Union of India v. Ashish Agarwal, where the Supreme Court preserved a large body of reassessment notices rather than leave the Revenue remediless.

The Court distinguished that judgment on a ground worth remembering because it is cited far more widely than its terms support: the decision was rendered in exercise of the Supreme Court’s power under Article 142, in peculiar circumstances, and did not lay down any ratio on curing a jurisdictional defect of this nature.

What a Practitioner Should Take From the Decision

Four practical directions emerge.

1. Plead the Defect as Jurisdictional, Not Procedural

The entire case turns on this characterisation. A curable defect may attract Section 292B; a jurisdictional defect does not. The distinction should be made expressly in the objections and repeated in the grounds of challenge.

2. Raise the Objection Before Completion of Assessment

The objection should be raised early and in writing. Section 292BB operates where the assessee has not objected before completion of the assessment. The widow here objected four times, and the record of those objections did real work.

3. Do Not Assume That Participation Is Fatal

Jurisdiction cannot be conferred by consent, and a legal representative does not fall within Section 292BB. Nevertheless, the safest course remains an early and express objection. The point should not be manufactured after participating without protest.

4. Test the Section 149 Limitation Position at the Outset

Whether the department can begin again is often more valuable to the client than whether the existing order survives. Where the Section 149 limitation period has expired and Section 150(1) is unavailable, the matter is closed rather than merely reopened.

The Epilogue: Why This Judgment Will Be Remembered

Having decided in favour of the widow, the Court did something courts seldom do.

It stated in terms that the department had proceeded against a dead person, undeterred by categorical intimations of the death. It also stated that the petitioner had acted illegally by filing a return in her deceased husband’s name.

The Court observed that a lacuna in the law had caused prejudice to the department and possibly a loss to the public exchequer. It nevertheless declined to fill that lacuna, holding that the principles governing the interpretation of taxing statutes and the separation of powers prevented it from reading down or adding to a fiscal provision. Equity and tax, it said, are strangers to each other.

The Court then directed the Senior Registrar to transmit the judgment to the Ministry of Finance so that the Government could deliberate upon the issue and Parliament could legislate if it considered it appropriate.

I would put a line beside that paragraph because of what it sits next to. The question occupying many of us this season has been the opposite one—Parliament legislating retrospectively to undo judgments it found inconvenient and whether a validating provision that leaves the substratum of a decision untouched can stand.

Here is the same constitutional boundary approached from the other side: a court that identifies a gap costing the Revenue real money, declines to close it through interpretation, and refers the matter to the institution constitutionally entitled to fix it.

A judgment that gives the department nothing and offers it the only thing a court properly can.

The Caution

This is a decision of a High Court, binding within its territorial jurisdiction and persuasive elsewhere. The department may challenge it further.

The core holding rests upon a settled line of authority concerning reassessment proceedings against deceased assessees and is unlikely to be disturbed. However, the Section 150(1) analysis—which is the part that forecloses fresh proceedings rather than merely quashing the existing ones—is the part most likely to be tested.

Until it is, it should be pleaded as a strong position.

The next folio reaches you in a fortnight.

From the File

A matter presently on our file sits on the other side of the line drawn by the Court here and is the more difficult for it.

The notice under Section 148 was issued while the assessee was alive, so the reassessment was validly initiated. There is no question of jurisdiction never having been assumed. The assessee died while the proceeding was pending. The assessment order, when it came, was passed in his name as though he were still alive.

The Department’s Likely Position

The department’s answer, when it comes, will be that the initiation was valid, Section 159 preserved the proceeding, and the name appearing on the assessment order was a defect of form that Section 292B could absorb.

The Legal Representative’s Position

Our answer proceeds on a different footing.

Section 159(2)(a) permits a proceeding begun during the deceased’s lifetime to be continued against the legal representative from the stage at which it stood. It does not permit that proceeding to continue against the deceased.

The legal representative was never brought on record, never put on notice of the case to be met and never heard. The resulting order was addressed to a person who did not exist on the date on which it was passed.

An order against a non-existent person is not a misdescription capable of correction. There was no assessee before the officer at all.

Which of those characterisations is correct is what the matter will turn upon, and it has not yet been decided. But it is a useful illustration of how narrow the ground can be.

Move the date of death from one side of the notice to the other, and an identical-looking defect changes its legal character entirely.

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Marginalia is written by CA Piyush P. Bafna, Advocate and Chartered Accountant, founder of Piyush Bafna & Associates, Pune. He is the author of AI in Income Tax Litigation (Bharat Law House, 1st Edition, April 2026). Comments, disagreements and corrections are welcomed at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).