The order under section 148A(d) rejects everything I said and the section 148 notice has followed. Can I take it straight to the High Court?
Usually not. The Supreme Court dismissed the assessee's petition against a High Court order refusing to interfere at that stage, saying that the notices had been issued after his objections were considered and that any grievance on the merits had to be taken to the Assessing Officer in the reassessment proceedings. It is an order dismissing a special leave petition with brief reasons, on a record that lists no counsel for the Revenue, and the same Court took a different line four months later in Red Chilli International Sales, where it set aside a refusal to entertain a writ that rested only on the existence of an alternative remedy. Read it as the ordinary rule and not as a bar, and read it today alongside section 147A, because what happens inside a reassessment is the most disturbed part of the Act.
Decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India — M.R. Shah J and Krishna Murari J) on 2022-09-02, reported as Petition for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No. 14823 of 2022, arising out of the final judgment and order dated 2 June 2022 of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in CWP No. 10219 of 2022. It bears on section 148A, section 148A(d), section 148A(b), section 148, section 147A, section 292BC, section 151, section Constitution Art. 226, section 281 (Act of 2025), section 280 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Reassessment & Reopening and Assessment & Scrutiny matters.
This is the order the department quotes back at you the moment you mention the High Court, and most of the time it is right. The cost of ignoring it is real: a writ dismissed at the threshold takes months, costs money and teaches the Assessing Officer nothing, and you still have to run the reassessment afterwards. The cost of over-reading it is just as real, because a genuine jurisdictional defect is worth far more before the notice bites than after the assessment order lands.
Binding on every court and authority in India.
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The petitioner had filed his return for assessment year 2018-19 and it had been assessed on 26 March 2021. On 14 March 2022 he was served with a notice under section 148A(b) alleging that income had escaped assessment. He objected by a communication of 21 March 2022. His objections were rejected by an order under section 148A(d) dated 31 March 2022, and he took that order and the section 148A(b) notice to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in CWP No. 10219 of 2022. A Division Bench of Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Pankaj Jain JJ dismissed the writ petition on 2 June 2022, holding that a writ court should not interfere where the statutory authority has not even concluded the proceedings, and that this was not a case where a bare reading of the notice showed the authority had taken to itself a jurisdiction it did not have. The Bench recorded that nothing it had said was an opinion on the merits. The assessee petitioned the Supreme Court for special leave.
The special leave petition was dismissed and the pending applications disposed of. The Court recorded that what had been challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under section 148A(d), that the notices had been issued after the objections raised by the petitioner were considered, and that if the petitioner had any grievance on the merits thereafter it had to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings. In those circumstances the High Court had rightly dismissed the writ petition and no interference was called for.
There is no extended reasoning to report, and a reader should know that before relying on the order. It is a record of proceedings on a special leave petition, heard by M.R. Shah and Krishna Murari JJ on 2 September 2022, with counsel appearing for the petitioner alone and none listed for the respondents. The ground is a single one: the section 148A(d) order had already dealt with the objections, so the machinery had worked, and the place to argue the rest was the reassessment itself. What follows from that is narrower than the way the order is usually cited. The Court did not hold that a writ under Constitution Art. 226 never lies against an order under section 148A(d). It held that on facts where the objections had been considered there was nothing for the writ court to do yet. Four months later, on 3 January 2023, a different Bench of the same Court in Red Chilli International Sales v Income Tax Officer — an appeal from a judgment of the same High Court delivered on the same day as the one here — set aside the High Court's observation that the writ petition was not maintainable because an alternative remedy existed, saying that it had not taken into account this Court's judgments on the jurisdiction of the High Court and that writ petitions have been entertained to examine whether the preconditions of jurisdiction for a notice under section 148 are satisfied. The two orders are reconcilable and should be read together: the ordinary course is the reassessment, and a properly pleaded want of jurisdiction is the exception that keeps the writ alive.
What is challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under Section 148A(d) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The notices have been issued, after considering the objections raised by the petitioner. If the petitioner has any grievance on merits thereafter, the same has to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings.
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Handle my notice → Ask a CA on WhatsAppUsually not. The Supreme Court dismissed the assessee's petition against a High Court order refusing to interfere at that stage, saying that the notices had been issued after his objections were considered and that any grievance on the merits had to be taken to the Assessing Officer in the reassessment proceedings. It is an order dismissing a special leave petition with brief reasons, on a record that lists no counsel for the Revenue, and the same Court took a different line four months later in Red Chilli International Sales, where it set aside a refusal to entertain a writ that rested only on the existence of an alternative remedy. Read it as the ordinary rule and not as a bar, and read it today alongside section 147A, because what happens inside a reassessment is the most disturbed part of the Act. This was decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India — M.R. Shah J and Krishna Murari J) and bears on section 148A, section 148A(d), section 148A(b), section 148, section 147A, section 292BC, section 151, section Constitution Art. 226, section 281 (Act of 2025), section 280 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961. It is reported as Petition for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No. 14823 of 2022, arising out of the final judgment and order dated 2 June 2022 of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in CWP No. 10219 of 2022. This is the order the department quotes back at you the moment you mention the High Court, and most of the time it is right. The cost of ignoring it is real: a writ dismissed at the threshold takes months, costs money and teaches the Assessing Officer nothing, and you still have to run the reassessment afterwards. The cost of over-reading it is just as real, because a genuine jurisdictional defect is worth far more before the notice bites than after the assessment order lands. If it applies to you, the first step is this: Separate a merits point from a jurisdiction point before you draft. A dispute about whether the information really shows escaped income is a merits point and belongs before the Assessing Officer; an assertion that the preconditions for reopening were never satisfied is not, and the Supreme Court in Red Chilli said the High Court has to look at that.
The petitioner had filed his return for assessment year 2018-19 and it had been assessed on 26 March 2021. On 14 March 2022 he was served with a notice under section 148A(b) alleging that income had escaped assessment. He objected by a communication of 21 March 2022. His objections were rejected by an order under section 148A(d) dated 31 March 2022, and he took that order and the section 148A(b) notice to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in CWP No. 10219 of 2022. A Division Bench of Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Pankaj Jain JJ dismissed the writ petition on 2 June 2022, holding that a writ court should not interfere where the statutory authority has not even concluded the proceedings, and that this was not a case where a bare reading of the notice showed the authority had taken to itself a jurisdiction it did not have. The Bench recorded that nothing it had said was an opinion on the merits. The assessee petitioned the Supreme Court for special leave. The matter was decided on 2022-09-02 by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India — M.R. Shah J and Krishna Murari J). On those facts the Supreme Court held as follows. The special leave petition was dismissed and the pending applications disposed of. The Court recorded that what had been challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under section 148A(d), that the notices had been issued after the objections raised by the petitioner were considered, and that if the petitioner had any grievance on the merits thereafter it had to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings. In those circumstances the High Court had rightly dismissed the writ petition and no interference was called for.
There is no extended reasoning to report, and a reader should know that before relying on the order. It is a record of proceedings on a special leave petition, heard by M.R. Shah and Krishna Murari JJ on 2 September 2022, with counsel appearing for the petitioner alone and none listed for the respondents. The ground is a single one: the section 148A(d) order had already dealt with the objections, so the machinery had worked, and the place to argue the rest was the reassessment itself. What follows from that is narrower than the way the order is usually cited. The Court did not hold that a writ under Constitution Art. 226 never lies against an order under section 148A(d). It held that on facts where the objections had been considered there was nothing for the writ court to do yet. Four months later, on 3 January 2023, a different Bench of the same Court in Red Chilli International Sales v Income Tax Officer — an appeal from a judgment of the same High Court delivered on the same day as the one here — set aside the High Court's observation that the writ petition was not maintainable because an alternative remedy existed, saying that it had not taken into account this Court's judgments on the jurisdiction of the High Court and that writ petitions have been entertained to examine whether the preconditions of jurisdiction for a notice under section 148 are satisfied. The two orders are reconcilable and should be read together: the ordinary course is the reassessment, and a properly pleaded want of jurisdiction is the exception that keeps the writ alive. In the words reproduced by the source cited on this page: "What is challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under Section 148A(d) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The notices have been issued, after considering the objections raised by the petitioner. If the petitioner has any grievance on merits thereafter, the same has to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings."
It was decided by the Supreme Court on 2022-09-02 and is reported as Petition for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No. 14823 of 2022, arising out of the final judgment and order dated 2 June 2022 of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in CWP No. 10219 of 2022. Binding on every court and authority in India. A Supreme Court decision binds every assessing officer, every Commissioner (Appeals), every bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and every High Court in India. An officer who declines to follow it is acting contrary to law, and that refusal is itself a ground of appeal. On section 148A, section 148A(d), section 148A(b), section 148, section 147A, section 292BC, section 151, section Constitution Art. 226, section 281 (Act of 2025), section 280 (Act of 2025), the practical question is whether the facts of your own notice match the facts of this case closely enough for the same rule to apply.
It helps the department, and it appears in this library for that reason — you need to know what the Assessing Officer will cite against you. The special leave petition was dismissed and the pending applications disposed of. The Court recorded that what had been challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under section 148A(d), that the notices had been issued after the objections raised by the petitioner were considered, and that if the petitioner had any grievance on the merits thereafter it had to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings. In those circumstances the High Court had rightly dismissed the writ petition and no interference was called for. It arises in Reassessment & Reopening and Assessment & Scrutiny matters, on section 148A, section 148A(d), section 148A(b), section 148, section 147A, section 292BC, section 151, section Constitution Art. 226, section 281 (Act of 2025), section 280 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, and was decided by Supreme Court of India — M.R. Shah J and Krishna Murari J. Before relying on it, read the source linked on this page and check whether it has since been distinguished, overruled or overtaken by an amendment to the Income Tax Act. In practice the steps that follow from it are these. Put everything you have into the reply to the notice under section 148A(b). This order turns on the fact that the objections were considered, so the record of what you said and what the order did with it is what a court will read later. Ask for the material relied on, including the annexures to the section 148A(b) notice, and put the refusal on record if it is refused. Check the approval under section 151 and the sanctioning authority, but know that section 292BC now deems an approval in an assessment or reassessment to be administrative and supervisory and shuts out an attack on the sufficiency of its reasons or its authentication. Check who issued the notice. Section 147A, deemed inserted from 1 April 2021, says the Assessing Officer for sections 148 and 148A is an officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or a section 144B(3) assessment unit — the library's own page on section 147A sets out where that fight stands and what the Supreme Court has stayed. Count the days on the section 148 notice. From 30 March 2026 the notice must allow at least thirty days. Do not sit on a real jurisdictional defect waiting for the assessment order. Taking it early is the point of a writ; taking it late is how you lose the writ and the appeal both.
Still good law. The order stands and High Courts apply it constantly. The Orissa High Court reproduced it in Stewart Science College v Income Tax Officer, W.P.(C) No. 17176 of 2022, decided 27 September 2022, and dismissed the petition on its authority; the Rajasthan High Court set it out in Chetak Enterprises Ltd v Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 7062/2022, decided 20 March 2023, and dismissed the petition while reserving liberty to raise every objection at the later stages. The Calcutta High Court considered it on 15 September 2022 in Dinesh Kumar Goyal v Union of India, describing rather than setting it out, and then distinguished it: it set the section 148A(d) order aside and sent the matter back for a personal hearing and disclosure of the material relied on. That is the exception this order leaves open, not a departure from it. What has moved is not the order but the thing it points you towards. The Finance Act, 2026, assented to on 30 March 2026, inserted section 147A with effect deemed from 1 April 2021, which makes the Assessing Officer for sections 148 and 148A an officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or an assessment unit under section 144B(3), notwithstanding anything in any judgment or in section 151A; it inserted section 292BC, also deemed in force from 1 April 2021, which makes an approval in an assessment or reassessment administrative and supervisory in nature and immune to attack for insufficient reasons or a missing authentication; and it gave the section 148 notice a thirty-day floor from 30 March 2026. Two of the grounds most often pleaded in a writ against a section 148A(d) order have therefore been legislated on. Section 147A was struck down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Jyoti Sareen v Union of India on 10 September 2026, and the Supreme Court stayed that judgment on 18 September 2026 on the condition that assessment proceedings shall not proceed further till the final disposal of the main matter, with final hearing fixed for 3 December 2026. The Supreme Court matter is listed under its own cause title, not the High Court one. Whether that condition reaches a reassessment as well as an assessment is being read both ways, and the order as reported does not say; a reader whose reassessment is running should get the order itself before assuming either. Nothing found records any reconsideration of this order itself. No source could be cited for that finding. Checking whether an authority still stands matters as much as knowing what it held: a decision may be overruled on one point and survive on another, or the provision it interprets may have been amended since. Read the source and the editor's note on this page before relying on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal.
The Supreme Court's record of proceedings was read in its own text, and the sentences quoted here were then checked against two later judgments that reproduce them — the Orissa High Court in Stewart Science College and the Rajasthan High Court in Chetak Enterprises. Both agree word for word, which is the strongest check available on a short order of this kind. A third court, the Calcutta High Court, considered the order on 15 September 2022 in Dinesh Kumar Goyal, described it instead of setting it out, and then distinguished it and set the section 148A(d) order aside; it corroborates neither the wording nor the outcome, and is listed here for the exception it shows. The High Court judgment under appeal, CWP No. 10219 of 2022, was read separately for the facts and dates above. Read what the order actually says, and not the sentence it is usually reduced to. It does not say that a writ never lies against an order under section 148A(d). It says that on these facts, the objections having been considered, the grievance belonged in the reassessment. The order of 3 January 2023 in Red Chilli International Sales was read in its own text for the same reason, and it matters that the judgment set aside there came from the same High Court on the same day as the judgment upheld here: the two together are the law, not either alone. Note that the record of proceedings in Red Chilli was itself corrected by the Supreme Court on 3 April 2025 on a miscellaneous application about typographical errors, so the wording circulating from January 2023 is not necessarily the wording now on the file. Nothing from Red Chilli is quoted on this page for that reason. The department's own practice has caught up with this order, and so has Parliament. Section 292BC removes the argument that the approval was granted without application of mind or was not properly authenticated; section 147A removes the argument that the wrong officer issued the notice, if it survives. Both are deemed to have been in force since 1 April 2021, which is why they reach back over notices issued years before they were enacted. On the 2025 Act. The 1961 Act was repealed on 1 April 2026 by section 536(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, and continued by section 536(2) for proceedings about any tax year beginning before that date, so this order governs reopenings that are still running. For a tax year 2026-27 onwards, the corresponding provisions are section 281 of the 2025 Act for section 148A and section 280 for section 148. No decision on writ jurisdiction under the 2025 Act was found, and none would be expected yet. The order is an order on a special leave petition, on a record that lists no counsel for the Revenue, and it declares no rule in terms. How far it binds beyond its own facts is a question no decision read here answers. No reported citation for it was found in a source that could be relied on, so only the petition number and the impugned judgment are given above. Nothing here predicts what the Supreme Court will decide about section 147A on 3 December 2026, or what becomes of a reassessment already completed if that section falls. This library shows the verification state of every entry openly. This entry has not yet been read in full by a chartered accountant. The summary reflects the sources listed on this page. Read the source before you rely on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) or the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.
The special leave petition was dismissed and the pending applications disposed of. The Court recorded that what had been challenged before the High Court was the re-opening notice under section 148A(d), that the notices had been issued after the objections raised by the petitioner were considered, and that if the petitioner had any grievance on the merits thereafter it had to be agitated before the Assessing Officer in the re-assessment proceedings. In those circumstances the High Court had rightly dismissed the writ petition and no interference was called for.
TaxSphere, “Anshul Jain v PCIT”, https://taxnotice.vittsphere.com/caselaw/case/anshul-jain-v-pcit-no-writ-against-a-148a-d-order/ (validity last checked 2026-09-23)
The judgment itself is a government work and may be quoted freely. The summary, the validity note and the reasoning on this page are this library's own writing: quote them with attribution, and please do not present either as the words of the court — this page keeps the two apart and so should a quotation of it.
Every entry in this library links to where it was found, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.
The Finance Act 2026 seems to have changed the reassessment rules backwards in time. What exactly did it change, from which dates, and which of my grounds has it taken away?
My reassessment for an old year was restarted in 2022 on the strength of a Board instruction rather than a fresh notice. What does that instruction actually say, and how much of it is the Supreme Court's?
The High Court quashed my s.148 notice because the ward officer issued it instead of the faceless unit. Does that judgment still stand?
The Supreme Court remitted my JAO reassessment case and gave four weeks to amend. Will the High Court actually let me amend to challenge s.147A?
