Section 528 — Power of Central Government or Board to condone delays in obtaining approval. Successor to s.293B of the 1961 Act.
Section 528 is in Chapter XXIII — Miscellaneous, which runs from section 499 to section 536.
Where an approval of the Central Government or of the Board is required under the Act to be obtained before a specified date, the section leaves it open to the Central Government or the Board to condone any delay in obtaining that approval, for sufficient cause.
Several provisions make an entitlement depend on an approval obtained by a date, and the approval is granted by an authority the applicant does not control. Without a condonation power a delay outside the applicant's hands would be fatal. The power sits with the same authority whose approval was required, and is conditioned on sufficient cause rather than exercisable at large.
The power is discretionary and belongs only to the Central Government or the Board — the authority whose approval was required — so it cannot be invoked before an Assessing Officer or in an appeal. It condones a delay in obtaining the approval; it does not move the specified date or excuse anything else that was to be done by then. Sufficient cause has to be shown, which makes the application an evidentiary one rather than a formality.
A person required to obtain the Board's approval before a specified date obtains it late. Section 528 leaves it open to the Board to condone the delay for sufficient cause. Nothing obliges it to, and the power belongs to the authority whose approval was required — the Central Government or the Board — not to the Assessing Officer.
In an application to the Central Government or the Board asking that a delay in obtaining an approval be condoned, and in the order disposing of that application.
it shall be open to the Central Government or the Board to condone, for sufficient cause, any delay in obtaining such approval
See the full 1961 to 2025 concordance.
